Acai is a Portuguese name for a kind of palm tree that is indigenous to Central and South America. It commonly grows in Brazil and Peru, in swampy areas and floodplains. Scientifically the plant is referred to as Euterpe oleracea. The Portuguese name means a plant that cries or expels water. Currently, acai has become very well-known especially for its fruit; which is small, round and black-purple in color. Acai fruit is used by the indigenous populations in the Brazilian amazon region as food. It is also served as a pulp and a beverage.
Globally, the curiosity in acai has been mainly based on it’s anti-oxidant qualities and of course the use as a weight loss option. The nutritional content of the fruit is composed of proteins, carbohydrates, fat, dietary fiber, nutritional vitamins and low sugar value. In the market, acai is sold as a supporting the immune system of people eating it. It has flavanoids that are responsible for countering conditions such as heart disorders. Extracts of acai are believed to have an effect against peroxyl, peroxynitrite and hydroxyl radicals. Scientists have shown a link between damage caused by free radicals and chronic sicknesses such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, cataracts and Alzheimer’s disease among others.
The dense nutritional value of the fruit is also shown to suppress appetite, hence its use as a weight loss option. Acai increases the libido, reduces inflammation and is believed to boost stamina and energy as well as delay some of the signs of growing old
Enzymes are all complex molecules that support every chemical reaction that happens in the human body. Digestive and Metabolic are the 2 major groups of enzymes. The Metabolic enzymes support you body functions and digestive enzymes reduce big food molecules into small, more easily useable components. Food originally has all the enzymes needed to aid the digestive process so that your body doesn’t need to do all the work. But when we cook, refine or process food, all of the enzymes are destroyed.
Our digestive system’s role is to extract and absorb the necessary nutrients contained in our food. However, a diet of cooked food means that we need to get enzymes from the pancreas, liver and other organs to manage our digestion and as the years go by this can result in a weakened immune response and it can slow down our metabolism.
Enzyme-deficient food sits in the upper part of your stomach rotting rather than starting to digest. Not a pretty picture. That’s what the enzymes are created to do. When that happens your white blood cell count will increase because your immune system responds to your undigested food as an alien substance. What’s more, it strains our systems to produce extra digestive enzymes at the expense of making metabolic enzymes for cellular activity. If stomach acids do not complete their job before the food moves into the small intestine, it’s difficult to extract the nutrients from your food.
This rotten material can adhere to the intestinal walls, hurting your ability to absorb needed nutrients and interfering with the ejection of toxins through the intestinal wall. In this environment, bacteria and viruses can thrive and easily multiply out of control leaving you susceptible to infection, fatigue, and degenerative disease.
Not many people will ever live on a raw food diet so we’re living on enzyme deficient food, but you can supplement with digestive enzymes like Protease (for proteins), Lipase (for fats) or Amylase (for carbohydrates).
Those of us who are familiar with and used to thinking about the importance of digestive enzymes can easily forget that enzymes are important to more than the digestive system . As a matter of fact , in the absence of enzymes we would have no chemical reactions at all, anywhere in our body, because enzymes are the potential labor force available to your body to fire up every necessary chemical reaction. Without enzymes nothing works .
But food digestion uses a considerable investment in energy from the body in terms of enzyme activity . Since we only have a certain enzyme potential when we’re born and we need it to last our entire life, it seems sensible to manage our capacity to manufacture enzymes and supplement when possible . One of the reasons that supplementing is necessary, is because our cooked diet robs us of the enzyme intake that would have been available to us on a diet of raw food . (And if you can understand how we are shortchanged of our natural enzyme intake from our diet of cooked food, just think of the implications for your dogs and cats !)
To provide our saliva and other intestinal juices with the many enzymes required to process our intake of cooked food, we must steal from the supply of enzymes to our heart, brain , lungs, kidneys , muscles and other tissues and organs . According to food enzyme researcher, Dr. Edward Howell, that competition between our digestive tract and our remaining organ systems in our bodies may directly contribute to the development of several different chronic and incurable conditions .
To summarize , in the words of this physician , who has spent over forty years treating ongoing ailments -the depletion of our enzyme ” stocks “, which is the direct result of our diets dominated by enzyme depleted- cooked food, is a leading contributor to premature aging and early death.
Since it is not likely that we are going to move totally to a diet of raw foods , there are two simple steps that we can employ to offset this issue . The first is to make a deliberate plan to eat more raw, fruits and vegetables replacing some of our cooked meals with simpler choices – like grains, fruits and vegetables.
Another idea – that’s also simple is to get into the habit of supplementing with quality digestive enzymes . Maximizer enzymes, which is a product available from RGarden is a multi-enzyme supplement. For people with problems like stomach ulcers, an even better choice is Gamma-Zyme a multi enzyme supplement that does not contain Protease ( for proteins) which can upset some stomachs. Lipase enzyme supplementis also a good choice to help process fat.
Just like everything else your immune system gets weaker when you grow old, so you might want to consider immune boosters to strengthen this important function.
One such supplement is Vitamin E. Based on a study from the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, at Tufts University in Boston, Vitamin E can help some of the immune system from declining with age. The research used 78 seniors in good health, sixty-five and older and discovered that 200 mg of Vitamin E every day for a period of sixteen weeks stimulated increased antibody production in response to vaccines for hepatitis B and tetanus.
Vitamin E can boost the immune response by triggering extra production of our killer T-cells to destroy germs and cancer cells. In addition to that, your B-cells, the special cells that create antibodies to kill bacteria are stimulated in the presence of Vitamin E. Another valuable fact – in a different study at the Harvard School of Public Health, using Vitamin E supplements was shown to cut the chance of heart attacks by 50%.
Vitamin D3 the vitamin manufactured in your skin following exposure to the suns ultraviolet light is also an immune system booster.
A new health drink that has immune system boosters also contains Alma fruit – something I had never heard of before. Alma fruit, or the Indian gooseberry is also an exceptional source of Vitamin C with 30X’s more vitamin C than you’ll find in oranges. Alma fruit is found in the plains and mountain regions of the Indian Subcontinent and grows anywhere from Burma to Afghanistan.
Continuing studies are demonstrating that Alma fruit might help to treat and/or avoid problems such as stress, cataracts, arthritis, hayfever and also cancer. It’s no surprise that the traditional Tibetan and Indian healers attribute to it special immune enhancing and anti-aging properties.
Japanese scientists at Nagasaki University have discovered that extracts from alma fruit prevent the growth of cancerous cells, with those in the stomach, uterus and skin showing the most pronounced effect. It’s also a richly concentrated source of antioxidants. The active immune booster in Alma has the name phyllemblin which can stimulate an increased production of immune cells.
Our bodies have many antioxidant defense systems, but within each cell a little protein called glutathione is crucial. Glutathione is essential for the action of immune cells, which protect us from bacterial and viral infections. Among people suffering from immune deficiency, glutathione levels are below what is normall found in the blood and immune cells. When they can increase glutathione levels to match what’s expeccted in healthy humans. it’s likely to help immune deficient people.
I always found this story to be very interesting because to many folks, living in our artificially disinfected world, bacteria is the enemy. Actually. it isn’t.
A perplexed Dr. Alexander Khoruts had run out of options for treating a patient with a wicked case of Clostridium difficile. Antibiotics didn’t help so Dr. Khoruts decided his patient should have a transplant. He transplanted some bacteria from her husband.
Prior to the procedureit was noted that her intestinal flora was almost non existant. “The usual bacteria just wasn’t there in her,” said Dr. Khoruts. “She was inhabited by all kinds of misfits.” Fourteen days after the procedure, the transplanted microbes were dominant. “That population was able to function and cured her condition quickly”.
To say that the scientific community was surprised with the outcome is an understatement. It shouldn’t be. Researchers are often blown away by the inter workings, impact, and sheer number of bacteria that populate our systems. We have over 10 times more bacteria than cells.
We end up with populations of different species, but they usually conduct the same essential chemistry that we need to survive. One of those functions is breaking down complex plant molecules. We have a pathetic number of enzymes encoded in the human genome, so we rely on extra microbes. As well as supporting the digestive function, the microbiome helps us in a variety of other ways. The bacteria in our nasal passage, for example, make antibiotics that battle the dangerous pathogens we inhale.
In order to work in harmony with our internal flora, our own bacteria population, our immune system has to be able to tolerate thousands of harmless bacteria while attacking unfriendly ones. Researchers are seeing that the microbiome itself guides the immune system to the proper balance. One way the immune system fights pathogens is with inflammation, but too much inflammation can be harmful, so we also have immune cells that produce inflammation-reducing signals. With their ability to contain unrestrained free radicals, antioxidant populations also support an inflammation fighting function.
Scientists are finding new links between our inner flora and our health. They’re also learning that many illnesses are accompanied by significant changes in the makeup of our inner ecosystems or bacteria populations. For example, people with asthma have a different collection of microbes in their lungs than healthy people. Obese people also have a different set of bacteria species in their digestive tracts than people of normal weight.
Some studies suggest that babies delivered by Caesarian section are more likely to get skin infections since they might lack the protective covering of bacteria from their mother’s birth canal. Caesarean sections have also been connected to an increase in asthma and allergies in kids. So have the high use of antibiotics in the United States and other developed countries. Farm children who are most likely to be exposed to healthy microbes from the soil are less likely to get autoimmune disorders than their peers who grow up in the city.
We consistently underestimate the importance of microbes and bacteria to our health and our medical profession has been too quick to take out their pads of paper and write up prescriptions for antibiotics and synthetic drugs.
Against this backdrop there has been a sudden upsurge in interest of probiotics and I think that probiotic supplements are pretty much a no-brainer given all the antibiotics most of us are exposed to over our lives. One probioitc suplement you might want to try is G.I. Balance – Dr Keller’s Immune System boosting probioitc
The liver is your body’s detoxification center. Think of it if you’d like as your systems washing machine. It isn’t a particularly glamorous job and the liver is rarely acknowledged along with organs like the brain or the heart for the valuable work it does. The simple fact however, is that without your liver’s cleaning action, countless toxins, including environmental pollutants, chemical food additives, impurities in the water, smoke, bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses will spill into your bloodstream and be free to travel through the body to attack the heart, lungs and brain.
In addition to protecting us from the onslaught of toxins from outside of our body, the liver protects us from toxins that we produce. Toxins can result from nutritional deficiencies, which are becoming increasing – and truly – inexcusably more common, because of poor eating habits and some of our conventional farming practices that are resulting in nutritionally deficient foods. Unfortunately, the body has an outstanding storehouse for toxins. We can store toxins in our fat, literally for years and then, in times of stress, or fasting, or dieting or even as a result of what should be healthy exercise, we finally metabolize those fats and release the toxins back into our bloodstream. The sudden influx puts great pressure on our livers.
It’s also impossible to mention the liver and not also mention Cirrhosis, the name that refers to end stage liver disease where years of chronic inflammation, usually (but not always) caused by one specific toxin – alcohol- have created such an extensive build up of scar tissue that there simply isn’t enough of the functioning liver left to do its job. The result is death (unless you get a transplant). Liver Disease is the 4th leading cause of death among 30-50 year olds.
Antioxidants are vital to the health and functioning of the liver in two key ways- to remove toxins from our body and to protect it.
Antioxidants help the liver cleanse toxins from the blood. In other words they support the detoxification function itself. During the second phase of detoxification, the liver releases large amounts of enzymes and antioxidants, including glutathione into the body in order to neutralize the toxins that have not already been modified by the liver directly in the first stage. You see, the liver can only do so much and it (along with the rest of the body) relies on antioxidants to cleanse toxins and free radicals before they can build up.
When the level of glutathione falls, usually as a result of a sustained intake of toxins, the liver is not able to do its job properly. It can become damaged by free radicals, all too soon reaching a state of oxidative stress that, among other things can result in inflammation. Left too long, in an attempt to protect itself, the liver produces scar tissue and the Cirrhosis cycle begins.
Unfortunately, chronic alcohol abuse is not the only source of toxins that can damage our liver. Let’s face it, our world and our lives are filled with toxins and stressors, so taking steps to protect the health of our liver is vital.
When you boost your level of antioxidants and your production of glutathione you’re helping your liver clean toxins from your blood and you’re ensuring that it can support your other organs by releasing key antioxidants like glutathione throughout your body to prevent systemic damage from oxidative stress. You’re also ensuring the liver has enough glutathione to protect itself from the damage that can be caused by free radicals and the heavy load of toxins we deal with. A stressed, inflamed liver affects the health of every organ in your body.
Eat a healthy diet, rich in raw fruits and vegetables. Cut down on stimulants like caffeine and on depressants like alcohol and nicotine. Drink at least 2 quarts of water a day and in addition to ensuring that your body has a rich supply of antioxidants, you might also with to consider supplementing your diet with digestive enzymes like Protease, Lipase or Amylase to aid in your digestion of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. When your digestive system works effectively it reduces the toxins that your liver needs to manage.