Bob Lazar is a pathological liar also in mundane business matters, because he now claims another spectacular feat (again without offering the slightest evidence):

Mr. Lazar, in March 2012 when the rat study was published, traveled in a time machine to around 2007, so that he had the six years required to replicate that study, so that at the time of this writing, March 3, 2013, he could say: “Our partner lab recently completed a duplicate experiment involving 8 rats. We were able to produce superior results with very minor changes in the manufacturing process of the material.”

In order to replicate the study, he needed to have rats survive to at least 5.5 years of age. When he used rats that were 10 months old, and he produced “superior results”, he would have needed approx. 5 years to do the study. But how can he have spent that time, if the study itself was only published one year ago? And what are “superior results”? The rats lived even more than 90% longer, on average? Lazar is not going to publish the results of his “partner lab experiment”, even though it would establish him as a major authority in this field, since the entire world is waiting for a confirmation of its results. Lazar is not going to publish these results, and neither is the “partner lab” because he is lying – there are no such results because these has never been such a replicaed study. This means that the very high price he asks for his “improved” “F60″ is based on a lie. There is no improvement – it is a shameless lie.

On top of that, Mr. Lazar sternly warns only to buy C60 in olive oil from him, because others are out to scam you: “Beware of bogus companies and scam websites that claim to sell similar compounds and state that it authentic – but isn’t. We recently purchased some Fullerene-60 in olive oil from a very impressive website – only to find that there was no Fullerene-60 in it at all!”. Hmm.. We wonder what that very impressive website might be? There is a very, very modest website selling C60-in-oil in the US. It’s basically two spartan pages. And then there was Revgenetic’s website, but it hardly qualifies as impressive and they stopped selling C60 in oil after being exposed as yet-another-scammer (they used sonication to force-dissolve the C60 rapidly at high temperature, yielding a likely less effective product), having only sold it for a few weeks. But even though they took a very bad shortcut, their C60 itself was bona-fide. That leaves our site. We are indeed “impressive” – we have gathered close to all relevant info on this topic. We offer a wealth of sometimes hard-to-find scientific publications, all relevant toxicity studies, user comments, original research, manufacturing cost breakdown, allotropic dosing calculations, the works. So Bob Lazar implies that the C60 we sell is fake, all the while making a preposterously fraudulent statement about his “improved F60″, based on a “reproduced rat study with improved results”. Abject nonsense of course, since there are many ways to produce Buckyballs, but there is only one C60 molecule. All C60 molecules are absolutely identical on the quantum mechanical level! But Mr. Lazar in his infinite wisdom found a “better way with superior results” and used his connections in the UFO/Area 51 world to travel half a decade back in time, so as to have his “improved replicated experiment (of rats living at least 5.5 years..)” done in time to start selling now.

The evidence is at the time of writing available at his sales page for his fraudulent United Nuclear F60 fullerene and olive oil:

Fraudulent, because based on the lie of improved efficacy, with which he justifies an inflated price – nearly double our price at the time of writing. It is wholly unknown what purity C60 Mr. Lazar used, and what quality olive oil. If he has proof that a competitor of United Nuclear is selling a fake C60 product, he should post the analysis results to everybody’s benefit. We did that with a Russian C60 manufacturer who sold us chimney soot. And if Lazar is sitting on an Earth-shattering “experiment” that confirms and even outperforms the Baathi Rat study (90% increased lifespan for rats on C60 in extra virgin olive oil) he should inform the press and bask in the glory of being the first to confirm its spectacular findings. We actually are sponsoring such a replication study, but unfortunately we do not have access to a time machine like Mr. Lazar, so we’ll have to wait a few years to know the results. Perhaps Bob should not dabble in the serious business of supplements and go back to pimping. He was arrested in 1990 for his involvement with a brothel. He pleaded guilty to pandering an received a three-year suspended sentence and did community service. If anyone wonders what “panderer” means: “A person who furnishes clients for a prostitute or supplies persons for illicit sexual intercourse; procurer; pimp.”

Note how Mr. Lazar, owner of United Nuclear and maker-of-many-unsubstantiated-claims not only operated a brothel – he also videotaped the customers and kept a database of their licence plates! There is only one conceivabe reason to do such a thing – blackmail.

United Nuclear is giving false hope that their Fullerene C60/F60 in olive oil might make people live to 150 years old: “Could a teaspoon or two a day allow Humans to live to 150 years of age? Time and further testing will tell.” This is nonsense. It is due to biochemical and genetical reasons not at all likely that humans will derive similar longevity benefits as rats, because humans have more sophisticated anti-aging mechanisms. What would be honest is to percentually reduce the expected benefit to humans, commensurate with the percentual differences in laverage lifespans between humans and rats. That would yield a modest human lifespan increase, and not 60 or 70 or 80 years, as Mr. Lazar raises hopes for, in a bid to justify his enormously high price for the product.

Bob Lazar has been arrested and convicted numerous times. Once he got three years probation for selling bomb-making materials. he was criticized for selling Polonium 210 – the same radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko. We noticed another thing: Around the time that Lazar started selling his F60 product, someone on Reddit claimed that he took “a drop of Sarah’s C60 and immediately my tongue went numb, and then I started pissing blood”. We had a look at the posting history of this person. He claimed in the past that several substances – he experiments with all kinds of prescription drugs and narcotics – made him “piss blood”. We have nothing to hide, so we just mention it as an example of well, more craziness in the C60-world. We thought this character may even be Mr. Lazar, because the posting clearly is a deliberate and false defamation of our product, which only a competitor would typically stoop down to. The interesting thing is that the poster elsewhere mentions that he sees UFO’s “every single day”. Perhaps he should have bought his C60 from UFO-Bob!

The C60 business is getting ugly. It is the most clinically-proven longevity agent around, which makes it the prime target for the vendors of other anti-aging products to attack. But they should really make their allegations a little more credible next time. Potential buyers should educate themselves. Don’t believe the “toxicity” nonsense, for example. There are people who want this product to fail because they sell a competing anti-aging product, or by people who don’t understand simple physics or chemistry, or are too lazy to read the studies, or both. Only water-soluble C60 and C60 aggregates are mildly toxic. But Lipofullerenes on the other hand greatly extend the life of all organisms they were tested on, from plankton to rats, meaning negative toxicity. It also greatly protected against liver damage caused by free radicals, as can be seen in the original rat study, linked to on the left sidebar.

This is the Ukrainian Dr. Grigoriy V. Andrievsky, who on page 132 of one of his many ill-formed works of fullerene propaganda feels the need to “correct” the famous words of Nobel Prize winner A. Szent-Gyorgyi. Who is Dr. Andrievsky? He is an obscure pseudo-scientist in the field of highly profitable homeopathy in the form of an expensive “Water of Life™” drink. Websites set up by an investor (Walter Derzko in this case) give the impression that this miracle water can cure Cancer, Diabetes and Alzheimer. Here is another such website. Dr. Andrievsky likes to argument from authority, and that starts how he presents himself. Look at his beard, moustache, professor glasses, name tag, logo on stylish lab coat, fancy pen and well-worn fullerene “bible”. Where have we seen such a poser before?

A spitting image of UFO/sex cult leader “Raël” (Claude Vorilhon), down to the same turtleneck.  This is how charlatans impress people. For lack of bona-fide evidence that helps part you from your money, they use hocus-pocus voodoo mumbo-jumbo disguised as bona-fide science (Dr. Andrievsky) or paranormal experiences (Mr. Vorilhon). Did you know that Dr. Grigoriy Andrievsky and his company IPAC lack the funds to purchase, feed and house 18 rats for five, six years? He should have abstained from buying that fancy pen and lab coat, then the world would have been able to see the proof that hydrated fullerenes are a million times superior than C60 in olive oil!  These are his words: He claims that his C60FWS at a million times lower concentration attains the same beneficial effect as C60-EVOO. And he wanted us to believe that his lab lacks the money and equipment to do a simple rat longevity study with a 18 rats with his product: “Nevertheless, despite our numerous researches of C₆₀HyFn, we did not have a possibility to conduct test of its influence on life extension of animals. [...] However, at present time the sufficient conditions and finances are not available for us to carry out such works.”

Hydrated fullerenes: Half a million dollar per liter

Dr. Andrievsky and his Ukranian sockpuppet “Andey” eschew no opportunity to spam for their trademarked “Water of Life” on web forums such as Longecity. Spammers usually have something to sell: Since the Baathi C60-in-EVOO rat study was published (rats were given 24 oral doses of C60 in extra virgin olive oil and they lived nearly twice as long as the control group),  Andrievsky & co have been relentlessly promoting their Hydrated Fullerenes, AKA Fullerene Water Solution, Water of Life™, C60FWS, HyFn, OW, Water-with-hydrated-C60-fullerenes or C60-HyFN. Below a price list of their Water of Life™ mother tincture:

Source: http://www.ipacom.com/index.php/en/production-left/88

Grigoriy V. Andrievsky’s company IPAC sells this C60-in-water solution. Their most concentrated Water of Life™ “mother tincture” is called FWS144, which is C60 with a concentration of 144 mg/l dissolved in water. If you would want to run a one-year test of its alleged medical properties on a single human being, you would need about a liter of it. I refer to Andrievsky’s “Experiment D” mentioned later in this article. The liquid is sold for $425,- per ml, so a liter costs $425000,-. With close to half a million dollars per liter, this can perhaps be called a bit steep, since 144 mg of C60 costs less than three dollars and the production process of FWS144 is as simple as dissolving some C60 into Toluene, adding water, sonicating it with a small ultrasonic horn and then evaporating the Toluene. The prohibitive price of this product, paired with the patented production procedure poses the problem that noone will be able to verify Dr. Andrievsky’s claims unless they enter into some kind of agreement with him first.

Consumer hydrated fullerenes are homeopathy

C60-HyFn in the form it has been approved as – a “food supplement” drink in the Ukraine – is essentially a homeopathic product because it is so extremely diluted that no effect on any organism can reasonably be expected. That we’re indeed dealing with Homeopathy has been repeatedly confirmed by Dr. Andrievsky in forums and in his published material, where he strongly implies that he believes in Homeopathy.

Whereas the mother tincture (Andrievsky uses this homeopathic term or its synonyma himself, e.g. on page 12 here)  is sold for nearly half a million dollars per liter, the consumer of hisWater of Life™ pays the equivalent of $6 for a bottle of D5 diluted homeopathically diluted mother tincture. Andrievsky is looking for investors so that soon the whole world will drink this “homeopathic stuff”, as he refers to it himself.

1 ml of FWS144 turns into 70 l, which is a 70000-fold dilution, roughly corresponding to a dilution of the “mother solution” of 5X or D5 on the homeopathic scale. To give this rather arbitrary recommendation more credence (why not dilute 100000-fold, is C60HyFn such an exact science already?), the self-declared genius pretends that there is only a specific and narrow tolerance permissible of 70 to 72 liters, as if diluting 73000-fold would lose some potency as opposed to diluting merely 72000-fold. This is not science, these are Magic Numbers.

1 ml of FWS144 contains 144 micrograms of C60, and diluting it to 70 l yields 2 micrograms of C60 per liter, two millionths of a gram – confirmed by IPAC as the correct dose for the consumer and sold as a health-promoting drink in the Ukraine, and Andrievsky publicly and repeatedly claimed that this infitesimally small concentration will cure illness in people, and that he believes in homeopathic effects here and here. I quote: “WRT homoeopathy [sic], my strong opinion is that C60HyFn and its water solutions, are the excellent tool for scientific knowledge about what is the mechanisms of action of homoeopathic [sic] stuffs…” We are indeed talking about homeopathic doses here, and Andrievsky is not even denying it. He also uses the term “mother solution” here on page 12.

There, the “mother tincture” contains 0.26 mg/ml, making the “life water” a solid D5 in homeopathic terms.

The mass of C60 is 720.64 Daltons, 1.2×10⁻¹⁵ microgram.  That means that there are about 1 trillion C60 molecules in a ml of “life water”.

This may seem a lot, until you realize that the human body contains approximately 50 trillion cells. So if you’d consume a small glass of “life water”, every cell would on average be supplied with just a single buckyball molecule. How insignificant this is becomes clear when you realize that the average cell contains approx. 25 trillion molecules. One C60 molecule per cell is like seventy cents compared to all US foreign debt. Not going to make much of a difference. However, the IPAC site says that one “course” is only 1 ml of D5-diluted “life water”, translating to roughly one C60 molecule per at best 50 cells.

More homeopathic mumbo-jumbo:

“Before use, it is recommended to store this final water solution with C60HyFn for 3-4 weeks, storing it in dark conditions at temperatures of 3-15 °C. As a rule, the longer this “fullerene water” is stored, the better its properties will be, (anologous to aging high-quality and expensive cognac).”

They also use the term “wise antioxidants”.

We’re certainly not unfairly associating Dr. Andrievsky with Homeopathy. Please refer to page 72 in his publication, where he uses Emilio Del Giudice as a prophet for his own claims and findings. Emilio Del Giudice authored a book, entitled “Omeopatica e Bioenergetica”. Andrievsky specifically refers to the homeopathic beliefs promulgated by Dr. Del Giudice. We can’t help but notice the amateuristic, populistic way Dr. Andrievsky’s publications are put together. Many of his usually incoherent sentences end with multiple exclamation marks (page 37 etc.), contain spurious whitespace and are rife with grammatical and syntactical errors as well as typo’s. He liberally uses all kinds of impressive looking graphs and tables, richly sauced with scientifically irrelevant, but highly suggestive imagery such as surrealistic paintings intended to create an atmosphere of “healing”. We are bombarded with literally hundreds of molecular models, absorption spectra, X-ray crystallogrpahy and structural formulas, and nothing whatsoever substantiates anything, really. His publications are not real science – they are sales brochures targeted towards the gullible public with a tendency to believe in unproven remedies, as long as there is a PhD in a white coat endorsing them – in this case, using his own studies as “proof”. He not only did all the available research, he also sells the “mother tincture” for half a million dollar per liter, or the homeopathic version of it for a handful of dollars a glass in the Ukraine ($15/l), where the typical salary is a few hundred dollars per month.

The studies with pharmacologically relevant results for hydrated fullerenes have all been done by the same company that sells the product, and they usually pertain to their mother tincture that cost half a million dollar per liter. When they use homeopathically diluted concentrations, they have unremarkable results, esp. in comparison to C60 in olive oil but are hyped by Dr. Andrievsky, with the apparent aim of persuading investors and the market. IPAC’s publications are aimed to impress laypeople, not at conveying scientific knowledge.

Andrievsky and IPAC’s unproven health claims

1. They imply that healthy people will get healthier, when they drink their homeopathic “Water of Life”.  From IPAC’s about page at http://www.ipacom.com/index.php/en/about-institute: “Earth, Water and People are Life that we are aiming to bring into Harmony. Every inhabitant of the Earth can improve his Life and Health by having touched our products.”

2. They imply that their “Water of life can cure disease. Andrievsky’s own words: “Really, if people with normal health accept or C60_OO or water solutions of C60HyFn they should not feel any essential changes. Changes will be observed when with health not everything is all right.”

These two claims are the surest evidence that we’re dealing with a scammer, not a scientist. They sell a homeopathic product. Homeopathy is considered a scam, pseudoscience. On top of that scam, they layered another scam, the fraudulent claim that even healthy people will get healthier when they take their product, and that their product will help cure illness. Hydrated fullerenes as sold by this company is snake oil, plain and simple. The “mother tincture” they sell is ridiculously expensive, prohibitively so. The most likely reason is to give the impression of extreme valuableness to the final consumer, the man in the street who buys their “Water of life” drink.

C60HyFn trials: Mild effects at high doses

The Baathi rat study that used C60 in olive oil showed spectacular liver-protective effects, compared to a similar study done with hydrated fullerenes, where nearly no protective effect was observed. The only mildly interesting study I could find with C60HyFn was Experiment D: Rabbits received a total of 0.4 mg/kg of body weight in two months. When consumed as “life water”, the quantity of C60 administered as C60HyFn for a human being would be 28 mg (person weighing 70 kg).

28 mg administered as FWS144 (144 mg C60/l) would require 195 ml of FWS144. In quantities between 100 and 999 ml, it is sold for $425,- per ml, resulting in a 2-month treatment cost of $82875,- dollars. A one-year atherosclerosis treatment would cost $497250,-. This makes hydrated fullerenes completely unsuitable to treat similar health problems in humans, because lipofullerenes have shown comparable or better effects and they cost many orders of magnitude less.

Experiment D was performed by – who could have guessed it – Andrievsky, the same person selling the extremely expensive FWS144 product used in experiment D. But even if we believe the vague claim of “promoted the reversion of atherosclerotic lesions”, substantiated by a crude black-and-white rendering of some spots on a blood vessel, it is clear that any health benefits ascribed to the “Water of Life” can only be realized for people with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare. The commercial product sold in the Ukraine, with 2 microgram per liter is a homeopathic scam that rides on these test results, because according to the IPAC website, the recommended concentration for C60HyFn as a dietary supplement is 2 microgram/l. Consumers of their beverage pay good money to get at best one C60 molecule to be shared by 50 of their cells. Anyone who understands basic pharmacology realizes that this is not going to have the slightest effect. Hence, the Ukrainian authorities approved the use of such vanishingly small concentrations as a dietary supplement, because it is obvious to anyone in the decision chain of approval that there can be no effect whatsoever on the human organism. So for the same reasons that homeopathic “medicines” are unrestricted, hydrated fullerene supplements at such low concentrations are also unregulated – because they are homeopathically diluted to the point of irrelevance.

Legitimate questions met with hostility

Another sign that something is rotten in the state of Denmark (or with Andrievsky’s “Water of Life”) is the way Andrievsky & co react when presented with politely phrased critical questions on a public forum. Instead of answering, they ridicule, slander and insult the person asking the question, accuse the person of trolling and sternly warn not to post anymore. Usually, when people posess valid arguments, they do not need to ressort to such techniques. This was posted in reply to my polite request for more data: “Never see such trolling in this forum )) Some ‘seller and scientist of great caliber’ cant do a simple math, some put a label ‘homeopathy’ and this is end of his arguments. Witchhunt ?  ))

Noone claimed I was a “scientist of great caliber” – that was a straw man. The accusation of me not being able to do simple math remained unsubstantiated. The poster later deleted the posting, but not after Andrievsky and his cheerleaders threw all kinds of hostililty at me and told me to shut up.

Andrievsky refuses to do a similar rat study

Whereas we write on our sales page that no short-term effects can be expected, the “scientist” Andrievsky refers to some anecdotal reports on the Longecity forum (most likely due to the Placebo effect) as “Invaluable experience“. He leaves no opportunity unused to claim that there are beneficial effects, and that they are wholly due to “his” hydrated fullerenes, as opposed to C60 in olive oil. The ironical thing is that Andrievsky has no corresponding research to point to, research that shows that rats live longer on hydrated fullerenes, for example. He say that his lab never had the money to do such research. They did not have the money to buy a dozen lab rats and feed them for half a dozen years, plus a little hydrated fullerenes? Even though they did have money for many other experiments with unremarkable results? Sorry, but this seems a lie to me. I think they have done the research, and there were no positive results. Here are Dr. Andrievsky’s own words, saying there was never any money and there still is no money to do a simple rat longevity test with his hydrated fullerenes: “Nevertheless, despite our numerous researches of C₆₀HyFn, we did not have a possibility to conduct test of its influence on life extension of animals. [...] However, at present time the sufficient conditions and finances are not available for us to carry out such works.”

Our motives for writing this article

Dr. Andrievsky claims or admits two key things:

1. His product is in essence homeopathic, and he believes in homeopathy

2. His product prevents and cures disease and will make healthy people even healthier

Since we think homeopathy is a scam, and since we think Dr. Andrievsky is a scammer, this article fits well in a series of many other articles exposing scams on owndoc.com, our main site. Exposing scams and scammers in the health- and beauty sector is one of our key activities. However, we hold the principle that it is unethical to attack a competitor for no good reason, so we don’t go around writing critical stories about random companies and people we happen to compete with. We make an exception for companies and people who attack us first though. Internet commerce is a dog-eat-dog world and if you don’t defend yourself, you’ll get eaten alive.

Dr. Andrievsky repeatedly claimed on popular public forums that our anti-aging product, C60 in olive oil (for which we make no health claims whatsoever), only worked because it contains trace elements of his patented and trademarked “Water of Life™”. When we replied that so far, in all his 18 years of studies on water-dissolved C60 he published no evidence that his fullerene water could prolong the lives of rats, and that there was such evidence for lipofullerenes (Buckminsterfullerene C60 in extra virgin olive oil), we were bombarded with crude language, insinuations, slander and insults, intended to prevent us asking further questions. When we pressed the matter further, Dr. Andrievsky claimed that his company in all its 18 years of research never had the equipment nor the money to do such research (on a few rats..), and that this was not going to change in the foreseeable future.

We then examined in some detail the fuzzy ball of “stuff” that Andrievsky published about his water-dissolved C60, and it all turned out to be over-inflated semi-scientific fluff with no substance, wrapped in layers of  impressive-sounding scientific lingo, “supported” by literally thousands of molecular models, graphs, structural formulas, literature references etc. None of it really makes much sense or is very relevant, and nowhere is there any strong evidence for any of his claims. When it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is usually a duck. We think Dr. Andrievsky uses questionable research (done by himself..) to sell a questionable product. He is free to promulgate his scientific theories, but we are free to state our opinion when someone like he comes along and starts quacking.

Free radicals are molecules that have one or more electrons too few or too many, and they will damage any biological molecule they come in contact with. The Buckminsterfullerene C60 molecule can accept several electrons in case of a free radical with an electron surplus, and donate several electrons in case of a free radical with an electron deficit. C60 thus is an incredibly effective antioxidant, not in the least because it does not get degraded or unstable by accepting or donating electrons. The olive oil of the lipofullerene C60 binds the C60 into the cell layers, also those of the mitochondria, the energy factories in the cell. Hence the cells and mitochondria get an integrated nano-scale antioxidant system implanted into their cell walls. This is totally unique. No antioxidant supplement can be reused indefinitely. No antioxidant supplement can both accept and donate electrons, let alone multiple electrons. No antioxidant supplement sits for weeks in the lipid bilayers, exactly where it is needed the most. Except C60, which can do all these things.

One way C60 functions as an antioxidant, is to neutralize reactive Oxygen species (ROS) by accepting an electron from them. The unique aspect of C60 is that accepting an electron does not alter the structure of the C60 molecule, effectively infinitely recycling it. C60 can accept or donate many electrons (it works as an electron reservoir), so it is an incredibly powerful antioxidant in the cell walls (270 x better than vit. C, even disregarding the recycling effect!), constantly neutralizing damaging free radicals that reach the cells or mitochondria. How this works in detail has been explained by forum members of Longecity:

d4shing @ Longecity.org:

ROS is an unpaired electron. If it sticks to something else that absorbs and distributes the “extra” electron, it is neutralized.

See the below for how it works with compounds like c60:

http://en.wikipedia….iki/Aromaticity

niner @ Longecity.org:

Let’s look at the example of superoxide,  .O2-, since it’s the most common case.  The way I wrote it with a period in front of the O means that there’s an unpaired electron on the molecule, the 2 means there are two oxygen atoms, and the “-” means it has a net charge of minus one.  The enzyme manganese superoxide dismutase (Mn-SOD) catalyzes two different reactions, shown here.  In the first one, an electron is accepted from superoxide, resulting in the charge on the manganese atom being decreased by one, and producing a molecule of ordinary oxygen.  In the second reaction, the manganese atom gives up its extra electron to the superoxide, which reacts with two protons from the surrounding water to produce a molecule of hydrogen peroxide.

• Mn³⁺-SOD + .O₂⁻ → Mn²⁺-SOD + O₂
• Mn²⁺-SOD + .O₂⁻ + 2H⁺ → Mn³⁺-SOD + H₂O₂.

In the case of c60, this dismutation reaction would look like this:

• C60 + .O₂⁻ → .C60^- + O₂
• .C60^- + .O₂⁻ + 2H⁺ → C60 + H₂O₂.

C60 can also work as an antioxidant by donating excess electrons again to free radicals:

In short, the Buckminsterfullerene C60 molecule is a “superantioxidant”, capable of neutralizing molecules that damage our cells and DNA by either accepting electrons or donating many electrons simultaneously, and not even be damaged by that process. These two properties are unique by themselves, but on top of that comes the fact that C60 connected with lipid chains (a lipofullerene) gets recycled in the cell so that the beneficial effects persist for weeks after having take a single large dose, or all day when taking a small dose.

Very few specialty stores in the world sell real extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). All such oil sold in supermarkets etc. is falsified, fake, adulterated. The EVOO market has been destroyed by such practices so nowadays, the oil ends up being consumed by the orchard owners themselves, their friends and families and the remainder is sold to local restaurants. The legendary longevity of Meditteranean people has often been attributed to their liberal consumption of olive oil, but we often forget that that oil is locally produced and sold and usually not filtered (filtering is only done for wholesale to traders for ultimate sale in supermarkets etc. but villagers won’t spend the money for filtering for their own use, neither does filtering benefit the taste.) The filtering of olive oil is done to clarify the oil and avoid sediments, but those sediments contain a host of unique antioxidants, part of the olive fruit itself and not merely its oil. This is why the oil we use in our C60 product is unfiltered. There is only a very limited production of real EVOO and trees often produce only a dozen liters a year, and with the current offered price of 2.2 Euro per litre of EVOO, it makes economical sense for a family to consume it themselves, as this price approaches the price for any old oil in the shop. If you don’t believe this, we urge you to read this eye-opening and infuriating book about the worldwide olive oil mafia by Tom Mueller:

As soon as understood that we stood no chance of offering our customers real EVOO unless we took massive action and basically personally imported the stuff from some Cretan village, we did exactly that. The people who run our C60-in-EVOO production lab in Sweden were given a well-deserved holiday in Paleochora and to make a long story short: Our oil now comes from an orchard owned by the parents of Stelios, captain of the Paleochora coastguard ship (part of the FRONTEX project) in the tiny village of Voulgaro, in the nort-west of Crete. To reach this village, this single-lane tunnel has to be traversed:

When we say that the Swedish production staff deserved a holiday, we mean it! Here is a batch of 50 ml bottles used for our C60 product on their doorstep, three weeks before they went on the trip to Crete:

We chose the North of Swedish Lapland for the production facility because we can store the fresh olive oil below freezing nearly whole year round, keeping it fresh. Some pictures of the olive press facility:

Before we agreed to buy, we tasted the oil.

Our cans get filled by the owner of the olive press. Each holds 18 liters and we purchased 17 cans full – 306 liters. They will be driven to Chania, where they will be Fedexed to northern Sweden.

We source the oil from Crete, store it cold near the polar circle in Sweden and produce it there as well, then it gets sent to the Czech Republic where it is stored in a cool cellar in winter and in a fridge in summer until the C60-in-olive-oil bottles are mailed to our customers.

A very interesting aspect of all this the price. This absolute top-quality oil is cheap! We saved so much money by getting the oil straight from the source, that the price difference paid for a two-week holiday for two people, including a hotel stay and daily meals in restaurants. We would be stealing from our own wallets if we used any other oil. The very best supermarket oil that we could find used to cost us $20,- per liter. We pay $4,- for the Cretan oil. Price difference: $4896! Shipping is 600 dollars. Before you think that we’re exploiting the local farmers: We voluntarily paid a significant premium above the asking price and we offered an even much better deal for next year, when 500 liters of oil will be put in a wooden crate and shipped to Sweden. Even though the farmer will be earning a profit on his 2013 harvest beyond his wildest imagination, we will save enough money to pay for two or three months of wages for our production person in Sweden. You understand that it is in our own financial interest to only use Cretan village EVOO from now on. This is capitalism how it is supposed to be: By cutting out the in this case unethical middle men – see the book I referred to earlier – everyone profits: Farmer (higher price), producer (more profit because we can be both cheaper and better) and consumer (better and cheaper product).

Why are we here? Because we read the book “Extra Virginity – The sublime and Scandalous world of Olive Oil” by Tom Mueller:

Since we’re selling an EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) based product, we wanted to know what is true about the rumors that no olive oil sold in stores and supermarkets really is the real deal. The book presents evidence that virtually all olive oil sold as extra virgin is aldulterated with other oils and otherwise fraudulently manipulated and presented as EVOO, which it absolutely is not. It simply is impossible to buy real virgin olive oil, or any other “real” olive oil, in any ordinary store, anywhere. Unless you get it straight from a farmer’s press or some exotic specialty store with direct connections to such a farmer, you get garbage, that is the message of the book. It is a detailed work of investigative journalism and it makes a convincing and shocking case.

First of all, we did not like that. The famous “rat longevity study” of C60 in EVOO used high quality extra virgin olive oil from Tunesia. It is as of yet not known whether the quality of the lipids, the quality of the oil affected the longevity-properties of the end product. The C60-in-oil is a lipofullerene, and exactly what lipids are connected to the Buckyballs seems not irrelevant. As soon as this unpleasant truth sunk in with us, we started to plan a trip to Crete, because we knew that Crete is world famous for their extremely high quality cold pressed olive oil. Crete has zero industry and is located in the centre of the Mediterranean. The south of Crete has no roads to speak of, and the culmination of unpolluted nature is Paleochora, a fishing village of 2000 souls. You won’t find cleaner mountain water, seawater or air in the whole of Europe, and you will be hard-pressed to find better EVOO than in the countryside surrounding it. There are olive orchards everywhere here. We made this photo close to the village:

Largely migrant workers hit the olive branches with a stick and they fall on nets, spread below the trees. The olives are then gathered in heavy bags and driven in the back of pickup trucks to the nearest mill. Several farmers share he same press. It’s often the richest farmer in the area that owns a press. We were shocked when we learned that the olive oil we thought to be high-quality, costing over $20,- a bottle in the supermarket was most likely fake, as nearly all olive oil bought anywhere is alleged to be by Mr. Mueller. We were shocked again when we were told that small trees only produce two litres of oil per harvest (= per year!) and that most large trees produce only around 8 litres. No wonder that the oil is cut and adulterated! The demand for EVOO simply outstrips supply by orders of magnitude! Real EVOO should cost a hundred dollars per litre or more, when sold in Western supermarkets. Instead, there is no such product for sale. The labels tell lies, and the European Union does nothing to put a stop to it. Read Mr. Mueller’s book to learn how you’re being sold yesteryear’s garbage, diluted with inferior oils that don’t come from olives and are hot-pressed and various chemicals mixed in to make it seem “extra virgin olive oil”. Color and aftertaste – it’s all achieved with additives. A lot of the oil isn’t even from olives. And we’re talking about the most expensive “Extra virgin – first cold press” olive oil available in gourmet stores!

We were curious as to the taste of real olive oil, so we went to the supermarket and bought a bottle of locally produced oil. The oil came in 0.5 litre bottles and cost substantially less than the cheapest fake oil (any brand-name oil..). There was no name on the bottle, no date, not even a price. Nothing. At home I filled a spoon with the oil and words can’t describe the freshness of the taste. That oil tastes a lot like like fruit juice! And that’s in fact what olive oil is – fruit juice. Olives are classified as a fruit.

Our game plan so far: We are hooking up with a local family who will receive a couple of freezers from us. They will buy the oil straight from the local farmers and they will freeze the oil so that it will not get rancid for a very long time. They will ship us the oil on an as-needed basis to our production facility in Swedish Lapland. To set all this up won’t take long, but we still need to sell our current batch and the next batch before we can use Paleochora oil, so it will take until spring 2013 before we’ll switch to Cretan EVOO in our C60 anti-aging olive oil.

Update: We just purchased 300 liters of oil. Visit the link for interesting pictures of the press! The oil has will be shipped on Monday to a garage in Swedish Lapland, where it is currently -20 Celcius (-4 F) and will stay very cold for another four months at the very least. Deep-frozen olive oil maintains its qualities nearly indefinitely. Come Lapland spring with temps above freezing, we’ll prepare the first batch with Paleochora EVOO.

SES charged $4000 for 100 grams of 99.9% pure C60, whereas HTICO wanted only €2000. After having validated HTICO’s 5 gram sample, we ordered 100 grams from them, and that was when the problems started. HTICO and Mr. Georgy Vilkov clearly never had done business outside of Russia, or even any business at all, which could be inferred from their invoice number 1. That “invoice” was worded like a contract, using a Russian contract template, bearing official looking stamps and signatures of HTICO’s director, etc. We would eventually receive eight identical signed and stamped copies of this invoice/contract, but not after severe delays, as for some reason, Russian Customs refused to let the shipment out of the country because of omissions in the paperwork. Five weeks after payment, we finally received our small shipment and started the Carbon-60 in olive oil production process.

However after several days of stirring, the characteristic ruby red color of Buckminsterfullerene in oil still hadn’t been attained. Instead there was a dirty brown color with lots of undissolved residue and nothing we did could change that. Not stirring harder, not even at high temperatures did their C60 dissolve properly, which we tried as a final test before sending the curious substance to be analyzed chromatographically.

The result: 12.5% of what HTICO sent us was C60, the rest was “undissolvable carbon compounds”. We had been scammed.

When we told Mr. Vilkov about the problem he was extremely reluctant to do anything about it, he was downright hostile and threatened with “causing a scandal that will take down your company”. He said that due to how Russian banks and Russian financial regulations work, they would be unable to refund us, neither did he have much faith in our chromatography results, etc.

So HTICO refused to believe us until we sent them a sample of their own product back by courier. After many weeks had passed, they eventually replied:

“A few days ago we finally received from our logistics service the sample that you sent us. Today we made first test and got and upset result, we accept that that product is defective. The solubility of it is very poor. We’re now making an investigation on how that situation may been allowed. We bring our apology and in the few days please await an official letter from us with explanation. “

We didn’t just lose 2000 Euro, we also lost 45 litres of premium quality extra virgin olive oil and of course we lost a significant part of our startup production capacity and the resulting loss of income from that.

Then Georgy Vilkov accused another Russian company called ILIP Corporation (ИЛИП, ilip.ru), run by Alexey Leonidovich Nagoryansky (Алексей Леонидович Нагорянский).

ILIP confirmed to us that they were indeed HTICO’s supplier, but they said that it must be us who were not dissolving their wonderfully pure C60 properly. When we informed both HTICO and ILIP that we had let SES – world #1 experts in fullerenes test their stuff and that it was basically chimney soot with a little C60 mixed in, there were many apologies issuesd by HTICO’s Georgy Vilkov, followed by the promise of sending us 130 grams of really pure C60 this time. Initially, we went ahead with that proposal but it soon became clear that neither HTICO nor ILIP could deliver on that promise. They “needed more time” and they “did not like our tone”.

We told them that instead of doing further business with them, we preferred to expose them as scammers, for the benefit of other companies considering to manufacture a similar product as ours. It will ultimately benefit the end consumer as well. Steer clear from Russian fullerenes and especially from HTICO and ILIP.

HTICO and ILIP share the same physical address, so for all practical purposes it is the same company:

High Technology Industry, llc. reg.# 1117847504389
HTICO CNANOC (EEWE)
Legal/postal address:
197022, St.Petersburg, Instrumentalnaya 6
Headquarters:
197101, St.Petersburg, Kamennoostrovsky pr.10, lit.D

Below is SES’s test result of the fake C60 we received from HTICO / ILIP:

Of course we have all original documents, impure C60 product, SES test results and emails available in the unlikely case HTICO or ILIP would want to sue us for defamation. In our opinion, both companies are criminal organizations and they sell fake fullerene products. The extremely hostile tone and repeated threats in their communications show that they are not a professional company.

Our emails to all of ILIP’s published email addresses bounce, and after doing some investigations, we conclude that there is no such person as Alexey Leonidovich Nagoryansky. Telephone calls are taken by a Russian-speaking answering machine only. These companies have largely empty shells of websites. Similar ones are springing up everywhere, such as this one in Germany:

http://www.nanomaterials.iolitec.de/

Buyer beware.

Even though Buckminsterfullerene (“Buckyballs”, chemical formula C60) was only discovered in 1985 and is presented in the media as a high-tech nanomaterial with promising applications in medicine, this intriguing substance occurs naturally in rare but massive geological deposits such as Karelian Shungite, a black, glass-like mineral with a 98% carbon content. Other natural deposits of C60 occur in Fulgurite from Colorado and Sudbury Black Tuff from Canada.

Shungite occurs mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan, but also in Austria, India and the Congo. For at least the last three hundred years, Russians have attributed healing properties to the stones, specifically when people bathe in, or drink the water that percolates through Shungite gravel. In the early eighteenth century, Peter the Great built a palace near such a spring that was widely know for having healing properties.  That Shungite spring spa became Russia’s first health resort.

Russian soldiers often carried a Shungite stone in those times, to purify water with. Modern research later confirmed the antibacterial activity of the mineral.

Russians are a superstitious lot and they certainly weren’t any less superstitious 300 years ago. After spending hours trying to find credible evidence for the alleged health benefits of Shungite, all we could find was hyped sales talk for the stones, so we found no independent verification in the form of published research for the Russian belief in the health-bringing effects of this mineral. The various sites claim relief for just about any possible ailment. We think that given the human tendency for exaggeration, only a fraction of the alleged health benefits are real and we have no way of knowing which part. Some selling Shungite claim that “soon it may become more expensive than gold” and that is not true, since with 250 Gigatonnes in the Karelian deposit alone, there is at least thirty thousand kg for every person on the planet. It shows that C60 as a natural mineral is available in great abundance though, and that it has been used for hundreds of years in Russian alternative medicine, with many believing in its healing powers, enough for the cotage industry of selling “magical healing Shungite stones” having spread to eBay and the like.

We think that when lots of people claim health benefits for many years, that it is likely that perhaps some of it is at least partially true. At the same time, we are unable to believe any specific claim regarding the health benefits of C60, because there simply isn’t any strong evidence available. Since there is so much recent scientific evidence for the beneficial effects of C60 on biological systems, this gives some credence to Russian health claims for Shungite.

It is important to stress again that Buckminsterfullerene C60 occurs naturally and that its only known mineral for 300 years, Shungite, has been associated with healing powers all that time. Shungite has been famous for centuries as a restorer of health, even before the Russian emperor decided to establish healing springs in an area where water emerged from Shungite deposits. Wikipedia says this: “Shungite has been used in medical treatment since the early 18th-century. Peter the Great set up Russia’s first spa in Karelia to make use of the water purifying properties of shungite, which he had himself experienced. He also instigated its use in providing purified water for the Russian army. The anti-bacterial properties of shungite has been confirmed by modern testing”.  We certainly did not write the Wikipedia entry for Shungite, since it contains errors because it says that it is “not fully confirmed” that Shungite in fact contains C60. To prove that this is incorrect, we bought a PDF with a scientific study that shows that Shungite contains around 1.5 to 2% of C60 (and some C70). That is a respectable percentage, high enough to make the authors speculate that this mineral could one day be the most economical way of producing fullerenes.

That paper is rather theoretical in nature so below is a photo of the crystal matrix of C60 in Shungite:

A photo of C60 in a crystal layer. The original can be found here, where it can be verified that the photo is indeed of Buckminsterfullerene in naturally occuring Shungite.

This beautiful place is where Shungite is available at the surface:

Shungite stones are sold on eBay for around two dollars per gram. Around 1.5% of that is C60, the rest is a mixture of many impurities so Shungite is by far the most expensive form of C60, and highly overpriced for a mineral in such great abundance. If you want to take a C60 supplement you should not suck on Shungite pebbles but take a bio-available form instead. C60 is nearly insoluble in water (saliva).

Health benefits of C60 in humans

The rat study showed that C60 nearly doubles rat’s lives, perhaps by simply preventing them from getting cancer or infectious diseases, but a mice study mentioned elsewhere on this site shows that something more is going on: Old mouse brains get rejuvenated when the mice take C60. They suddenly perform as well as the brains of three months old mice, when remembering the layout of a maze and learning to navigate it. So there may be some subtle noticeable effects on the human organism, we can not (yet) dismiss reports of certain beneficial effects as placebo – we have to keep an open mind.

Longecity.org is a forum for people interrested in life extension and dozens of people have been pioneers in taking C60 in extra virgin olive oil.  Longecity forum members have reported the following beneficial effects (only effects reported by more than one person are listed):

• More energy
• Less sleep needed
• “Mental inprovements”
• Can lift much heavier weights, sometimes to the point of causing tendon injury. Commonly reported.
• Can do more reps of the same weight. This was the most commonly reported benefit. People were adamant that there was a great difference, comparable to taking Creatine and that not even anabolic steroids enabled such an immediate increase of both repetitions and max. weight.
• Calmer, reduction in stress
• Can run longer with seemingly more effective utilization of Oxygen. Less fatigue. “Cardiac improvements”. Better stamina and endurance.
• Can run faster whilst feeling more comfortable with a pulse that would normally be too high for steady-state.
• Higher libido. This is also seen in rat trials, already with 4 micrograms/kg, a dose five times lower than what we recommend as a daily dose.
• Faster recovery of the skin after sunburn (with topical application). Do not expose C60 products to UV light – it splits off reactive Oxygen species under UV.
  

Professor Fathi Moussa, principal author of the C60 rat study says that C60 prevents oxidative stress (that is quite an understatement – as their research shows, C60 fully protects against highly hepatotoxic chemicals that would otherwise kill in hours):

“We know C60 for a while now, and we know it’s a very powerful antioxidant.”

(From an interview of Prof. Moussa by Anthony Loera.)
Original picture removed due to legal threat by Anthony Loera/Revgenetics.

C60 could become interesting for athletes and in medicine, protecting against the effects of aging such as cancer and immune system deficiencies

It will take a long time to find out what this product does for humans. We think it may prolong life in humans as well as in rats because the C60 in oil becomes a lipofullerene and is available in the mitochondrial lipid bilayers where it acts as a recyclable super-antioxidant (C60 is a 270 times better antioxidant than vitamin C but vit. C is not lipid-soluble and neither is it recyclable, so C60 may in fact be tens of thousands of times more effective as an antioxidant than vitamin C). In fact it is in a different league alltogether as all the other, “conventional” antioxidants ever researched.

People are already buying C60 and dissolving it at home in olive oil and taking it and they’re already claiming beneficial effects. (Broken link due to censorship explained in the moved thread here). Here is another thread on home experiments with C60, note how it is explicitly forbidden to mention any positive effects and note that many postings mentioning such effects by long time posters have been deleted! Reporting the results of your own longevity experiment with small rodents is explicitly prohibited too, which shows a clear censorship agenda on Longecity.

REFERENCES

Baggott, Jim. Perfect Symmetry: The Accidental Discovery of Buckminsterfullerene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). [Baggott observes that "the tendency for the closed-cage carbon molecules to burn, degrade, or become entrapped prevents the detection of naturally occurring fullerenes. Imagine the surprise, then, when it was announced in July 1992 that C60 and C70 had been found in samples of shungite, a coal-like rock from Shunga, a Russian town some 200 miles northeast of St. Petersburg. (pp. 254-55).]

Becker, L., Bada, J. L., Winans, R. E., Hunt, J., Bunch, T. E., and B. M. French. “Fullerenes in the 1.85-billion-year-old Sudbury Impact Structure.” Science, 265 (1994): 642-644.

Buseck, P.R., Tsipursky, S.J. and R. Hettich. “Fullerenes from the Geological Environment.” Science, 257 (1992): 215-217.

We put a lamp behind an Erlenmeyer that had been mixing C60 for a week:

But it doesn’t do the color justice, as we had to brighten the picture in order to see anything at all, as the photo became very dark because we put a lamp shining at the camera. The red colors found online are of C60 dissolved in water, it’s much harder to show it in oil. The real color of the wall in the above picture is yellow, we just were not able to get the lighting conditions such that the color would show up. In reality, the oil is a very dark deep ruby red. The light behind it is a halogen lamp.

When you take a smaller, centrifuged and filtered amount, the color looks brown:

There are several C60-in-olive-oil  pioneers on the Longecity forum who are mixing their own Buckyballs into oil and they had the same experience. As soon as you take a small quantity of the oil, it looks brown.

This is the same oil after one week of mixing (still with plenty of suspended C60 particles so it’s more brown than red.)

The olive oil is yellow/greenish (extra virgin oil contains chlorophyll) so a purely red color is unattainable.

This is the color after two weeks of stirring and the centrifuge stage (we filled off a small centrifuge tube so that the color became visible in front of a lamp):

Dr. Fathi Moussa, principal author of the C60 rat study, is not sure that the longevity effect is due to the “super-antioxidant” properties of C60, but it is his best guess. He remarks that C60 is unique in that it can go deep into the cells and cell walls:

“It’s a very lipophilic molecule and it penetrates into places that other natural antioxidants don’t go.”

“C60 can access a cellular- or sub-cellular structure that the other antioxidants can’t access.”

“If the other antioxidants don’t work well, it’s because they are not as well distributed in the organism like C60.”

(From an interview of Prof. Moussa by Anthony Loera.)
Original images removed due to legal threat by Mr. Loera/Revgenetics.

The study remarks how it is normal for Wistar rats to die of tumors or pneumonia, and how the C60-treated rats neither developed cancer nor lung problems – they simply died of general organ failure associated with old age – they reached their genetical maximum lifespan, so to speak. Whereas the rats in the control group – Wistar rats of the same age and genetically on a par with their C60 brethren, died of tumors and pneumonia. The researchers considered four possible explanations and thought it most likely that the C60′s unparalleled antioxidant properties had something to do with it. However, there must be more to it than that, because the rats only received 24 doses – how can 24 days of C60 supplementation add years to their lives? C60 is eliminated from the body in 10 to 24 hours, at least that is what studies tell us. However, those studies have only looked at the general tissue distribution of C60, not at the mitochondrial cell membrane, to give but an example. The major theories how lipofullerenes’ anti-aging effects are:

(1)  C60 remains in the lipid bilayers of the cells and mitochondria, doing its ROS-neutralizing work for weeks or months.

Lipofullerenes could act as super-antioxidants on the cellular level, where they remain for a very long time, since they are not “used up” when they act as antioxidants, and they are constantly recycled in the cell.

(2) The C60 physically rejuvenates organisms on the cellular level, for example by DNA demethylation or by otherwise reversing cellular damage on the molecular level.

Interestingly, the size of the Buckyball C60 molecule is such that it fits exactly inside the “minor groove” DNA winding and it indeed binds to it, protecting it against Methyl groups that degrade and neutralize the DNA:

Here are some postulations made in the Longecity forum on how C60 may extend healthy life:

(3) “Attenuation of age-associated increases in oxidative stress.”

(4) “I’m wondering if the fullerene might not be the active longevity ingredient.  Maybe it’s just the transport.  And dissolving it in olive oil also allows some olive oil molecules to penetrate the fullerene sphere and get transported to places by the fullerene that orally ingested olive oil wouldn’t make it to.  Like deep into many cells throughout the body even those across the bbb.  It that’s right, all the longevity effects observed are just an amplification of the effects of the olive oil.”

(5) “My guess is that it binds with toxins.”

(6) “It is a catalytic radical scavenger – i.e. it is able to re-cycle and repeat its activity over and over. It accumulates in mitochondria. It has antiviral action. C60 has anti-cancer properties. Possibly, as with methylene blue, there might be a hormetic affect – with low dosages having a positive effect, and higher doses a deleterious one.”

(7) “Maybe enhancing neurite growth sufficiently enhances feedback signaling in the body and that is what results in an enhanced immune response.”

(8)  “Since the mechanism of action is still unknown we have no idea if the buckyballs are destroyed in the process of performing whatever function they are performing. Maybe they somehow bust up AGEs and are destroyed in the process. Maybe they settle in and become a conduit for some biophotonic reaction.”

(9) “We do know fullerene passes the blood brain barrier, and has neuroprotective effects.”

(10) “C60 is a catalyst. It is not used up in the process of its action.”

(11) “C60 is able to associate with mitochondria and induce a cytoprotective antioxidant effect.”

(12) “C60 might be resetting the mitochondria to a younger age.”

(13) “We humans have been cooking our food for a long time and the soot from these fires maybe contained fullerenes. Perhaps fullerenes are an important part of the paleolithic diet.”

(14) Here’s a sketchy hypotheses of how C60 might work:

• Fullerenes wrapped in oil are transported to mitochondria for burning.
• Once there, the oil is stripped and the naked fullerenes are attracted to other hydrophobic molecules, such as the methyl groups on the mitochondrial DNA, and reacts with them, stripping them from the DNA.
• Demethylation of the DNA thus reverses the epigenetic DNA changes that result in dysfunction of the mitochondria.

(15)  There’s been some mention of mitochondrial biogenesis in this thread… Is this something that fullerenes are known to do?  Mitochodrial biogenesis means the creation of new mitochondria.

(16) Fullerenes are known to like methyl groups, and that they could steal them from DNA would certainly provide a tidy explanation of how this works.

(17) Fullerenes might exist in a more longer-lived reservoir, like in the membrane of a long-lived somatic cell.

(18) My hypothesis is that fullerenes wipes out the methylation, the DNA automatically recovers it, and the effective age is set to zero. The DNA will begin to age again, and a later treatment can reset it back to zero. Keep resetting every few years and the ultimate limit then passes to the telomeres and epigenetics of the nuclear DNA.

(19) It’s very clear that C60 has mitochondrial activities; for example, animals treated with C60 are more resistant to radiation effects, and are far more resistant to the oxidative damage from carbon tetrachloride ingestion.  That isn’t just a reset to a youthful state, because youthful animals would be injured by both radiation and CCl4.

(20) Olive Oil is a 5-LO inhibitor.  5-LO inhibition reduces ROS, independent of P53.  I cannot escape the conclusion that the choice of the Olive Oil solvent, per se, cannot be dismissed as being unimportant to the Buckyball study conclusion.

(21) I have a hypothesis: Because of its hydrophobic propensity, C60 incorporates itself  into cell membranes  thereby presenting the adducted olive oil which disrupts the signaling pathways of arachidonic acid in the phospholipids therein while also sopping up supersoxide everywhere the C60 finds it, nice “one-two”. How/why does the C60 pass through the cytosol into the mitochondrial membranes? Wouldn’t it want to stay in the cell membrane? Is it shunted through the cell membrane by a channel protein or an inner membrane channel protein? Is there a charge graident involved? Is it just possible that because it behaves like a wave also…it makes for the mitochondria and leaves the olive oil in the cell membrane?

(22)  Harman, in this 2001 paper posits that fullerene may work in the mitochondria as a blocking agent.  Many antioxidants,at therapeutic doses,actually decrease the efficiency of the mitochodria, which is why possibly we do not see increases in the maximum lifespan. If fullerene is indeed a blocking agent, then it acts by stopping oxygen from generating reactive oxygen species and superoxide formation, while having no negative impact on mitochondrial functionality. Other studies posit it is a superoxide dismutase mimetic.

(23) Drugs, diet, or exercise are all capable of changing gene expression; for example, resveratrol alters the expression level of on the order of 1000 genes.  It’s very likely that fullerenes change the expression level of numerous genes as well.  For the vast majority of these genes, the changes in expression are transient, and when the drug is withdrawn, expression returns to normal.  In some cases, however, there are apparently long-lasting changes put in place by CpG (de)methylation, histone (de)acetylation, etc.   These are epigenetic modifications.

(24) ..the Fullerene Solvent served as the means for “guiding” the Fullerenes to the “cell type” that the solvent has a natural affinity for, to the appropriate “receptor” of that cell type..

(25) C60 is thought to be a “SOD Mimetic”, SOD is an enzyme that clears out the destructive superoxide ROS in your cells.

(26) I suspect that the C60 that finds its way into non-mitochondrial membranes isn’t hurting anything, and may be helping some, but the fraction that gets into mitochondrial membranes is what’s doing the magic, because it’s close to the source of damaging superoxide ions.

(27) I think that the conjugation of fullerene with molecules present in olive oil is crucial – and it makes no sense whatsoever to tinker with the basic formula when the knowledge of what is going on is basically non-existent. If you are going down this route, stick to olive oil.

(28) I wouldn’t say that we don’t have a clue how this works.  I’d say there are some hints.  We know it’s redox active, and that fullerene carboxylic acid compounds can act as SOD mimetics, turning superoxide radical anion into oxygen and H2O2.  We know that superoxide is generated in mitochondria, and it’s at least reasonable to suspect that a fullerene fatty acid adduct could become part of the mitochondrial membrane.

(29) I don’t think it is a stretch to assume that the positive effects of C60, if any, are  tied to it’s relative inertness.

(30) That it is the Olive Oil combination with C60s that extended life spans in the surprising way it did suggests that our innate Immune System driven CAIP is implicated in some way in the study result.

(31) A resetting of the Mitochondrial DNA in the gut related to our Innate Anti-Inflammatory mechanisms resets our ability to manage the auto-immune diseases (like cancer) which, increasingly, knock us off as we age.

“But what we are absolutely sure of is that C60 is completely non-toxic, even in the very long term.”

(From an interview of Prof. Moussa by Anthony Loera.)
Original image removed due to legal threats by Anthony Loera.

Some people hardly ever take any pills or supplements as a matter of principle, and I am one of those – with the exception of important medical treatment such as antibiotics, or supplements to help me recover from the flu. I believe in a healthy diet instead of eating food from depleted soils and supplementing with vitamins and minerals.

After having talked this through with my husband and doing weeks of intensive literature research into fullerene (esp. C60) toxicity, we both have decided to start taking C60 on a daily basis, perhaps for the rest of our lives. A no-brainer, since it will be cheap for us, because we own the so far only “serious” production line. “Serious”, as in sterilized bottles, staff with gloves and face masks, and manufacturing procedures performed in a way that we don’t have to be ashamed when the authorities come knocking. Please understand that we in no way are allowed to endorse this product for human use, neither are we allowed to make any claims as to its beneficial effects on human health. We can discuss the data in research papers though.

C60 (The chemical name for Buckminsterfullerene AKA “buckyballs”) is neither a food supplement nor a medicine. It is a natural substance found in small quantities in chimney soot, candle smoke and wood ashes, and although the pharmaceutical industry has often professed a strong interest in this spherical molecule, nothing worth mentioning in that regard has come out of their production lines so far. Infitesimal quantities of C60 are added to certain astronomically priced skin creams and to be honest, we doubt that the price is worth it.

Pure C60 in olive oil is therefore a mixture of two substances found in nature. It is true that C60 can only be economically produced using industrial methods, but the same goes for vitamin C.

There have been quite a few studies done on fullerene toxicity, and what they found was:

- Unmodified C60 can’t dissolve in water, only be suspended. C60-oil mixtures are non-toxic, but C60-water mixtures or hydroxylated C60 are more or less toxic, although the toxicity of C60 nanoparticles in water can be fully prevented by adding vitamin C:

http://www.owndoc.com/pdf/c60-nanoparticles-toxic.pdf

This is a study claiming toxicity of aggregated (undissolved lumps of) C60, please note that aggregated C60 has nothing to do with oil-dissolved and oil-bound molecular C60 (lipofullerenes). Aggregated C60 are lumps of C60 that flaot around in a liquid, they are not dissolved C60 molecules at all, let alone bound to lipid molecules as they are in C60 in olive oil. So those studies that talk about C60 toxicity do not imply toxicity of C60 in oil, since that is a chemically totally different product.

Carbon nanotubes are suspected to have similar properties to asbestos fibers, and concern that some sources of C60 could theoretically contain traces of carbon nanotubes were alleviated by a study that found no traces of them in even the most impure commercial sources of C60.

Lipofullerenes are stable in the presence of water, so when you ingest C60 dissolved in oil it will never turn into C60 dissolved in water, since the affinity of the C60 molecule to lipids is very much higher than that to water.

- Some solvents used in fullerene purifcation are toxic, and have to be removed before producing any C60 consumables.

- C60 in oil (lipofullerene) is totally non-toxic and has shown “negative toxicity” (stronger growth and longer life) in several trials on lower as well as higher organisms. C60 dissolves in vegetable oils, although this takes a lot of stirring and patience, and not much of it dissolves. There have been quite a few studies done on oil-dissolved Buckminsterfullerene and none of them found any toxicity – on the contrary, it has a strong liver-protective effect, it protects against radioactivity (gamma radiation), a beneficial effect on cardiovascular health and lab rats lived nearly two years longer than the olive-oil only control group. That means that at least for rats, C60 in extra virgin olive oil has the highest “negative toxicity” of all substances known to man. Rats normally only live two, three years. And those C60 rats did not develop the tumors or pneumonia to which the control group eventually succumbed. Instead, the C60-in-oil rats simply died of the generalized deleterious effects of old age on their organ system. They hit in a way their “genetical maximum lifespan”. This by itself would be a strong argument against any concerns of toxicity.

Additional studies confirm that C60 dissolved in oil  is non-toxic. On the contrary, every study shows beneficial effects – whatever lifeform is used as a test subject: Fungi, small aquatic organisms, mice, rats. They live longer, are more resistant to age-related illness, the C60 has a liver-protective effect and brain function in old age is restored to the level of that of a young animal (mice study). C60 even prolongs the lifespan of mice with familial ALS and has a neuroprotective effect – not that we think that C60 will have much  effect on sporadic ALS. It does appear however, that C60 somehow performs a rejuvenating action somehow. There are many hypotheses as to what could be happening, and we will discuss those soon.

We initially thought that the centrifuging of the C60-oil solution in the rat study was done to make sure that no nano-particles of C60 ended up in the solution, but it turns out that not even centrifuging and micro-filtration can remove all of  those. The good news is that toxicity trials show that C60 nanoparticles in oil are harmless. What the centrifuging and filtration does however, is to remove micro-particles. The filtration also removes all bacteria from the oil, since bacteria do not fit through a 0.22 micrometer hole. The rat study was a LD50 study, and the researchers wanted to avoid criticism oftheir methods, hence this meticulous preparation of the C60-olive oil solution, so that if toxicity would be found, that noone could claim that it could be due to microscopic C60 particles or even bacterial contamination, after two weeks of stirring.

Apart from the rat C60 LD50 study that turned into a rat C60 longevity discovery, there has been a Japanese study that found no toxicity of C60 dissolved in oil (corn oil this time):

http://www.owndoc.com/pdf/C60-in-oil-is-non-toxic.pdf

More eleborate reports on all types of fullerene toxicity (or the absence of it) are here and here.

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