Gunning for autism

Weightlifters put their muscles on the line all the time, but Nick Delgado doesn’t see his attempt next week to set a world lifting record as just about his own body. For 52-year-old Delgado, it’s a vindication of his whole line of work — as president of Ultimate Medical Research, he offers consultations and supplements that promise to turn the clock on aging bodies just as he says he’s done for himself. But the event gets personal as well; his every lift will raise money for research for autism, which affects one of his four sons.

On Tuesday at No Limits Gym in Irvine, Delgado will lift a pair of dumbbells with a hammer curl, then press them over his head — more than 1,000 times in a row.

As he tries for the most cumulative weight lifted in a single hour, spectators will have a chance to sponsor his lifting to raise money for autism research. With luck, they might watch him end up in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Delgado credits his own research with giving him his strength and endurance.

The complex protocol he follows covers everything from diet — he advocates drinking 60-ounce raw vegetable shakes every day — to hormone and nitrogen supplements, to breathing air in varying atmospheric pressures, to taking injections of adult stem cells. All, he says, help the body reach its full potential in some way.

“It’s not that I was gifted or had some genetic ability,” he said. “I wanted to take my 52-year-old body and function competitively against guys 24 to 28 years old. I’m not somehow inhuman or unbeatable; it’s a series of supplements and dietary factor.”

Some of his least conventional techniques didn’t start as exercise research, Delgado said. They came to mind as he was looking into treatments for his son’s autism.

Delgado said he started experimenting with hyperbaric oxygen chambers after reading some reports that claimed they helped fight autism. Similarly, he was reading up on stem cells as a possible treatment for cerebral palsy and came across hints they might help with autism as well. But learning more, he started to believe they might be a real boost for his aging joints.

“It was not done just as an experiment,” he said. “But I must say I always like to do a treatment before I’d subject my son to it.”