Category Archives: MAXGXL

Why Your Heart Needs AntiOxidant Protection

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Elderly man in great shape

The human heart is certainly a wonderous organ .  Even before your first breath , the muscles that make up the heart are working hard , circulating oxygen rich blood to every part in you and drawing oxygen depleted blood back to your lungs.  On average, your heart will beat 37,869,120 times each year , year after year.  That’s around two and a half billion heartbeats in your lifetime .

Clearly , the heart is your powerhouse and deserves protection. You know , nobody can survive without a working heart and   with an average of 2 deaths every 68 seconds ,  forty percent of all the deaths in the United States are the result of heart disease, the leading cause of which is CAD- Coronary Artery Disease

Because it’s the hardest working organ in your body, the heart muscles will produce a continuous supply    of energy and it’s this massive level of energy creation which renders your heart vulnerable to the threat of free radicals. Hence , the heart is one organ with a high demand for antioxidants  and the most important of which is Glutathione.

Producing Energy for the Heart

The heart’s astounding ability to make energy is rooted within each cell’s power plants known as Mitochondria.  Every cell in every organ has these tiny energy producing sites .  On average, most cells will have a few hundred mitochondria, but the cells found in the muscles of your heart have about 5,000! The power that’s made in your cells, is created in the form of a compound called ATP or adenosine triphosphate.  Unfortunately , producing energy has a price .

The by- products of creating energy are free radicals and with so many mitochondria in the cells of the heart , there will also be a matching population of by-products . Without the intervention of antioxidants , free radicals can create a cascading response within the heart cells that can kill them and their components – like cellular DNA.

CAD and Heart Disease

Arteriosclerosis – Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) which is generally called hardening of the arteries or loss of arterial elasticity is a leading cause of Heart disease. It’s been linked to a substance called lipid peroxidase. That’s what you get when the lipids in your heart are converted into free radicals.  Lipids, are a large group of molecules which include waxes, sterols, fats and the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E & K.  In addition to   raised levels of Free radicals, patients with CAD have also been found with depressed levels of antioxidants including Glutathione.  Missing a sufficient supply of antioxidants to scavenge free radicals in your heart, this organ and your arterial system will eventually suffer from oxidative stress.

Our systems are designed to manage free radicals created by normal processes, but most of us are subject to extra stresses that were not part of the original plan . They include environmental chemicals ( like cigarette smoke!), lousy diets, the unhealthy pace and emotional stress of our busy lives and poor conditioning of our muscles from not enough exercise.  We have placed our antioxidant reserves at a terrible disadvantage.

Why You Need More  Glutathione and Other Antioxidants

As we age , our chemistry starts to slow down. The mitochondria in our cells inevitably produce less energy and we also naturally begin to produce less glutathione – which is vital for a healthy heart.  Boosting glutathione supply can’t make us live forever, but given how important your heart is , it only makes sense to  eat better ,  live a healthier lifestyle and take concrete steps to boost our natural production of glutathione.

Oral Glutathione supplements are not effective, but you can increase your glutathione with a glutathione precursor like MaxONE.

Antioxidants and Your Aging Brain – A Few Thoughts

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From your first breath to your last and for each microsecond that happens in the middle , there is a war being fought in every part in your body .  There are easily millions of these battles going on simultaneously and they involve oxyradicals on one hand and antioxidants on the other . These batttles affect how long you live , your susceptibility to a variety of diseases and without question the quality of your life and health as a senior citizen .

A human brain is highly vulnerable to damage from free radicals because although it only represents 2% of the body mass , about 20% of the oxygen you take in is required by your brain.  Oxy or free radicals – unstable oxygen molecules are created by by many different processes , but a major  source is a natural and inevitable by-product of metabolizing oxygen . Since 20% of your oxygen supply is used by your brain, it stands to reason that your brain will be subjected to many free radicals.

In your mind is a major presence of naturally occurring molecules called Lipids. Lipids include waxes, fats, sterols and some fat soluble vitamins like E, A, D and K. Lipids store energy, they are  signaling molecules and are structural components of your cell membranes.  Lipid peroxidation is   free radical Lipid damage and a reason for the importance of antioxidant supplements .

Your defense against Lipid peroxidation in your brain is with antioxidants and in particular a small subset called Network Antioxidants or the Antioxidant Network ,  made up of Vitamins E, C CoEnzymeQ10, Glutathione and Lipolic acid .  Network Antioxidants help each other to clean up free radicals in the brain and they are uniquely capable of repairing each other .  Of the Network Antioxidants, the most important is Glutathione laso known as The Master Antioxidant. Glutathione is naturally manufactured by your body and resident in each and every cell.

Unfortunately , your brain maintains lower levels of   Glutathione than other parts of your body and as you age , the natural supply is even less since the ability to make Glutathione declines by about 10% for each decade after our twenties .  But a brain absolutely requires Glutathione to be healthy.  For example, consider the part that Antioxidants play in connection with Alzheimer’s Disease – or senile dementia.

There is a strong link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease . In a study conducted in 2009 on rats , two same sized groups were purposely fed aluminum toxins, but group was also supplemented with free radical scavengers.  One group had a significant growth in lipid peroxidation and developed oxidative stress – that’s the result of rampant free radical damage.  Reduced glutathione and other network antioxidants were also measured . For the rats that were given the toxins along with the free radical scavengers, none of these changes were found .

With the brain’s vulnerability to the creation of lipid peroxides an abundant store of antioxidants ( in particular Network Antioxidants and most specifically , the master antioxidant Glutathione) is key to sustaining a healthy and functioning brain. While oral glutathione supplements are not considered to be effective, you can take a glutathione precursor like Max One .

Antioxidants and Oxidative Stress

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Elderly man in great shape

Presenting all the connections that exist between aging, DNA damage, chronic pain, inflammation,  oxidative stress, the role of antioxidants and our metabolism and immune systems is a long and very complex process.  However, there is a definite link between the prevention of oxidative stress and the avoidance or at least delayed onset of many degenerative and often painful illnesses that we expect to be a part of normal aging.

Oxidative stress is  a killer- even if it doesn’t sound like one and its associated with many conditions and diseases like  Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, myocardial infarction (a heart attack that prevents blocks the blood supply to a part of the heart muscle causing it to die) other forms of heart failure  and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Oxidative stress is the resulting condition when there is either an uncontrolled increase in peroxides and oxy-radicals/free radicals (collectively referred to as reactive oxygen species)  or a significant shortfall in the body’s antioxidant defense systems, one of which is glutathione.

When your body can’t use its supply of antioxidants to protect itself- at a cellular level- from oxy-radical damage, you have oxidative stress.

Reactive oxidative species originate in different ways – both internally and externally.

Externally, free radicals are caused by; introduced toxins and pathogens, cigarette smoke, pollution, chemotherapy, UV damage, radiation, vigorous exercise and stress.

Internally, oxy-radicals are a standard by-product of your metabolism.   Even our own immune system used oxy-radicals to defend us against toxins and pathogens.  Normally, our natural reserves of antioxidants will scavenge these damaging by-products.   However, when aging and/or poor health and nutrition interfere with our usual ability to prevent oxidative stress the damage builds up and our defenses are eventually overwhelmed.

Oxidative stress and reactive oxygen species are also responsible for damage DNA damage which can lead to mutation.  Unfortunately, just as our production of antioxidants like glutathione decreases as we age, so too does our natural ability to maintain our DNA in good repair. One obvious example of the damage caused oxidative stress is  aged appearance (at best) to the skin of people who have not been protected from the sun’s harmful rays.

According to the Free Radical Theory of Aging , the accumulation of damaged cells caused by the unchecked action of free radicals is a primary contributor to the process of aging and while we cannot stop that, no one will debate that good health practices can contribute to a increased quality of life through what are supposed to be the golden years.  Antioxidants like glutathione which you can support with supplements like MaxGXL® and MAXONE can also play a key role in the avoidance  of chronic inflammation by reducing oxidative damage.