Creating Your Picture of Health.
Imagine for a moment your ideal picture of health.
Is the image one of a happier, healthier you?
Or, like many, is the difference between your ideal image and reality one of stark contrast?
For many, achieving their ideal picture of health isn’t a simple matter. It’s like trying to put together pieces of a complicated jigsaw puzzle every day of their lives!
Where Do You Start?
Even a complicated jigsaw puzzle is easy to solve once you learn a tried-and-true approach to solving it. As the experts will tell you, the key to solving the puzzle is piecing together the foundation first. It’s the same with your health; the key is to start with your body’s functional foundation unit, its most basic part – the cell! All living things from snails to whales, and of course people, are made up of cells. Some organisms consist of only one cell.
The human body has more than 100 trillion living cells. In a process known as metabolism, the cell “breathes,” takes in food and gets rid of wastes. Just as it is with plants and animals, cells that are left unprotected are subject to breakdown from damaging elements. Whether you know it or not, that could easily be happening right now to your very own cells.
Free Radicals – How They Damage Your Cells If you could view the microscopic world of your body at the cellular level, what would you see? You’d witness your cells under attack from free radicals – the byproducts of metabolism. Free radicals are electrically-charged molecules that attack your cells, tearing through cellular membranes to react and create havoc with the nucleic acids (genetic material), proteins and enzymes inside.
These attacks by free radicals – collectively known as oxidative stress – are capable of causing cells to lose their structure and function and eventually disabling or killing the cell. Can you feel the effects of free radical damage?
Not directly.
But unless you take the necessary steps to help counteract the unrelenting damage from free radicals, you run the risk of damage to your joint tissues and organ systems. And you can feel this effect. It’s the discomfort from compromised cardiovascular health, the pain from joint degeneration, the ache from muscle malfunction and overall accelerated aging. Antioxidants – Your First Line of Defense Our bodies have developed a highly sophisticated and complex antioxidant protection system – one that counteracts the ‘pro-oxidant’ effect from free radicals with an ‘antioxidant’ effect that protects the cells. Unfortunately, for most people this ‘protection system’ is badly out of balance.
Overwhelmed by an onslaught of oxidative elements – pollution, infection, smoking, poor diet and alcohol, to name a few – many are in desperate need of a larger force of free radical-fighting antioxidants.
Where do antioxidants come from? What form do they take?
Perhaps the most familiar are the dietary antioxidants — vitamin C, E and beta-carotene. They’re considered to be among the most important and effective antioxidant nutrients. But science has uncovered a number of other dietary antioxidant substances called phytonutrients that function beyond the role of traditional vitamins. These plant-derived substances contain complex compounds of potentially potent antioxidant properties.
Other naturally-occurring antioxidant activity comes from enzymes and the trace minerals selenium, iron, copper, zinc and manganese. Let Us Help to Restore Your Antioxidant Balance.
How can you achieve an adequate level of antioxidant protection?
The human body utilizes a complex network of antioxidants composed of several players that work together as a team. The intent is to build a well-balanced reserve of antioxidants as part of a good diet. Ironically though, excessive consumption of some antioxidants may be counterproductive. Rather, the goal is to strike a balance between the damaging effects of free radicals and the protective effects of antioxidants. While you can’t always eat right, exercise regularly or avoid all the toxins and pollutants you are exposed to everyday, you can make a positive contribution to the cellular war against oxidative free radical damage.
You can do this by consuming a well-balanced diet rich in fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains, reinforced by comprehensive, high quality antioxidant supplements.
Let us help piece together your own comprehensive antioxidant protection program. Like an expert puzzle maker, we have the knowledge, experience and skills to put together the necessary pieces to help you attain antioxidant balance.
By properly combining the right antioxidant pieces – phytonutrients, trace minerals, enzymes, vitamins and more – you’ll establish the foundation necessary to create your ideal picture of health!
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