A student asks: “Is the product known as C60 (purple power) safe for human consumption, what is its purpose and how does it work in the human body?”

This is a product intending to capitalize on the early research showing some promise of the fullerene molecule as an adjunct of healthy well-being. It owes its activity to the antioxidant properties that have been demonstrated in vitro and some in vivo work as well, showing there are long-term benefits of exposure to this material. There are conflicting studies showing some toxic potential, and until this is sorted out, it is premature to recommend this on a large scale. There are many, many, issues yet to be determined here—who can tolerate it and who cannot, and under what circumstances, the level of exposure, and the dose regimen, are quite arbitrary and unsupported. The measures of quality control, and route of administration, and formulation for delivery to the body, are additional variables. And this is common to many substances that are extracted from nature that many attempt to bring forward as products without sufficient expertise to formulate them in an effective manner, so they are bioabsorbable and reach beneficial levels within the cells and tissues. When one turns to a substance of this sort, one is then retreating to science for answers, and while that can be useful, it is a world of great complexity and holds surprises many times as well. Things are rarely as simple and straightforward as they seem, and the types of claims made here are extremely difficult to validate, because of the impracticality of large-scale longevity trials. As we have stated before, we would say it is premature to have people ingesting this material on the basis of advertisements alone.