Antioxidants help arteries stay healthy in people at risk for heart disease

(NaturalNews) Antioxidants are substances that protect cells against the effects of free radicals — molecules produced when the body breaks down food or is exposed to environmental toxins and radiation. Free radicals are believed to play a role in heart disease, cancer and other disorders. So it makes sense that antioxidants could help protect or even treat many health problems. However, some poorly designed studies have given antioxidants mixed results (http://www.naturalnews.com/023357_pharmas_antioxidants_vitamins.html) and resulted in the mainstream media reporting that antioxidants are virtually worthless. But new research provides hard evidence that taking antioxidant supplements long-term produces dramatic benefits in people with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. That’s the conclusion of a randomized, controlled trial of vitamin C, vitamin E, coenzyme Q10 and selenium capsules. The research results, just reported in BioMed Central’s journal Nutrition and Metabolism , show these dietary antioxidants produce multiple positive effects on sugar and fat metabolism, blood pressure and arterial flexibility (which allows blood to move freely through the body). The study was conducted by scientist Reuven Zimlichman and his research team at Wolfson Medical Center in Israel. They randomly divided 70 high blood pressure patients into two groups. One group was given antioxidants supplements and the other took placebo capsules for six months. Those taking the antioxidants received vitamin C (1000 mg/day), vitamin E (400 i.u/day), coenzyme Q10 (120 mg/day) and selenium (200 mcg/day). Tests at the beginning of the trial, after three months, and again after six months documented that patients in the antioxidant group had marked improvements in their cardiovascular health. They had more elastic arteries and better blood sugar levels. In addition, their cholesterol profiles were healthier with a significant increase in HDL, the so-called “good”, heart-protective cholesterol. In fact, the researchers concluded “antioxidant supplements have the potential to alleviate atherosclerotic damage..” “Antioxidant supplementation significantly increased large and small artery elasticity in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. This beneficial vascular effect was associated with an improvement in glucose and lipid metabolism as well as significant decrease in blood pressure,” Dr. Zimlichman said in a statement to the media. “The findings of the present study justify investigating the overall clinical impact of antioxidant treatment in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors.” More hopeful news for heart patients: another study by Dr. Zimlichman and colleagues published in the June issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology , found that taking the amino acid L-arginine long-term also helped people with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. In this randomized, placebo-controlled trial, 90 patients were assigned to receive either oral L-arginine capsules or placebo capsules. After six months, tests indicated those taking L-arginine had improved vascular health — including a significant decrease in systolic blood pressure. For more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20604917 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20531213 http://www.naturalnews.com/021976.html

Antioxidants do help arteries stay healthy

Long-term supplementation with dietary antioxidants has beneficial effects on sugar and fat metabolism, blood pressure and arterial flexibility in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Researchers report these positive results in a randomized controlled trial of combined vitamin C, vitamin E, coenzyme Q10 and selenium capsules.

Weight Loss Drugs Produce Only Minimal Weight Loss, Even After Taking Them for Years

(NaturalNews) Weight loss drugs may result only in minor weight loss, even after long-term use, according to a new study conducted by Brazilian and Canadian researchers and published in the British Medical Journal. Researchers conducted meta-analyses of a number of studies conducted on the weight-loss drugs orlistat (marketed as Xenical and Alli), rimonabant (marketed as Acomplia) and sibutramine (marketed as Meridia), and found that users lost an average of less than 11 pounds, even after one to four years of use. Several key indicators of cardiovascular health were improved by taking the drugs, however. Researchers examined 16 studies on orlistat, which operates by preventing the body from digesting fats. The average long-term user of orlistat lost only 7 pounds and had reduced diabetes risk, blood pressure and cholesterol. As many as 30 percent of users experienced digestive side effects. Ten tests on sibutramine were also examined, along with four on rimonabant. Both drugs work by interrupting neural signals in the brain. Sibutramine was found to reduce patients’ weight by an average of only 9 pounds. In up to 20 percent of patients, however, it induced side effects including insomnia, nausea, and elevated blood pressure and pulse. Rimonabant users lost an average of 11 pounds. Six percent of users experienced an elevated rate of mood disorders, however. After receiving reports of psychiatric side effects such as anxiety and depression, the FDA refused to approve rimonabant for U.S. sale last year. Orlistat, in contrast, is approved for over-the-counter sale in a weakened form (Alli). The move to sell weight loss drugs over the counter has drawn substantial criticism, including in an editorial accompanying the recent study. “Selling anti-obesity drugs over the counter will perpetuate the myth that obesity can be fixed simply by popping a pill,” Dr. Gareth Williams of the University of Bristol wrote.

Heal yourself in 15 days by recognizing your innate healing power (part two)

(NaturalNews) This article continues our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days . In part one, we looked at why the real secret to rapid healing is to remove the barriers to healing (http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html). In part two, we look at why your healing potential is so powerful that you can’t even turn it off! When you scrape your elbow, a bit of blood oozes out to clean the wound and wash away bacteria. It then forms a protective scab that keeps out invading microorganisms while your skin has a chance to heal underneath. There, some real magic takes place: Your skin cells innately recognize the need to divide and grow to fill the wound. A cancer-like process is unleashed at the cellular level, activating nearby cells to divide and grow. Your DNA is replicated in the nucleus of each cell with the help of some of the most astounding nanotechnology every witnessed in human civilization. (The best scientists in the world can’t even come close to recreating it.) As your cells multiply, nutrients and building blocks are carried to them through a blood supply that adapts to the particular size and shape of the wound. If a blood vessel was destroyed in your accident, the growth of new blood vessels is spontaneously initiated to take their place, and they grow into the tissues within mere hours. As your skin cells fill in the previous wound, the replication effort is delicately turned off, one by one, so that replicating skin cells don’t keep replicating beyond what they need to — a process that would cause the creation of a skin tumor. Your body’s cells know exactly when to grow and exactly when to turn off, and when it’s all said and done, you’re left with a perfect replacement for the skin you previously lost. Completely automatic healing The truly amazing part of all this is not the cancer-like processes that are delicately controlled by your body wisdom; it’s not even the fact that your body has the ability to re-grow lost cells — it’s the fact that all this takes place without any conscious involvement on your part . Healing yourself is automatic , in other words. You don’t have to direct blood to the wound, direct the cells to start replicating, direct the molecular waste products to be carried away and decide when cell replication should be stopped. All this happens without your involvement — even without your awareness! Much of it happens while you sleep, in fact. While your conscious mind is dreaming, your innate body wisdom is working the biochemistry and energetic transformations necessary to repair your tissues. You can’t stop this process even if you wanted to . You could try to focus all your mental power on your skin not healing, and yet your skin would heal itself anyway. That’s because your body is a powerful self-healing organism . It heals itself automatically, innately, without your conscious awareness or involvement. Your ability to heal yourself is so powerful that you can’t stop yourself from healing! Why we don’t always heal If this is true, then why aren’t you healing everything else? Why aren’t you always in perfect health? The answer, as you’ve seen throughout this article series, is because we tend to erect barriers to our own healing. And we often misread the symptoms of sickness that are asking for help, “treating” them in a way that makes the situation worse. Fact: Many “symptoms of disease” are actually the result of your body’s attempt to heal itself. For example, most people are chronically dehydrated . They don’t consume enough high-quality water. Because water is so vital for proper blood composition, when your body lacks sufficient quantities of water intake, it begins to take action to reduce water loss . A significant portion of the water loss experienced by the body each day is lost through respiration — a bit of water vapor is exhaled with each breath. So to conserve water, your body attempts to reduce water loss during respiration by constricting your bronchial tubes through the creation of histamines . These histamines constrict breathing, making it more physically difficult. Modern (western) medicine misdiagnoses this as a disease called “asthma” rather than the true underlying cause which is often simply dehydration . So instead of prescribing water, which would solve the underlying water shortage and end the body’s creation of histamines, western doctors prescribe anti-histamine drugs that force the bronchial tubes to relax and ease air flow. This, of course, promotes further dehydration, leaving the patient in a more severe state of water loss. So you see, the body is attempting to heal itself, and the symptom of histamine production is a mechanism by which the body is attempting to heal, but it is misinterpreted by western medicine and then made worse by misguided interventions. Blood pressure Another good example of this is high blood pressure . High blood pressure is often caused by something I refer to as “sludge blood” — blood that’s too thick and viscous to flow freely through the body’s small capillaries. So in order to make sure good circulation is taking place, the heart has to pump harder, thereby raising blood pressure. This is the body’s way of making sure this thick blood reaches all the cells throughout the body (cells that don’t receive blood will die, and that’s bad). But healthy blood shouldn’t be so viscous. It should flow more freely, with less friction. When blood is properly hydrated and nourished with the right fatty acids (more omega-3s in particular), the heart does not need to work as hard to pump it throughout the body, so blood pressure automatically drops. (It’s like the difference between sucking water through a straw versus sucking honey through a straw… the more sticky and thick the honey, the more pressure it takes to move it.) Western medicine completely misdiagnoses this situation and says that “high blood pressure” is itself a disease. And this high blood pressure is attacked with drugs that artificially lower blood pressure by forcing artery walls to relax. As you might have guessed, this then immediately causes circulation problems because the thick sludge blood is no longer reaching all the cells it needs to reach. That’s why people who take high blood pressure medications very often end up with circulation problems . Their underlying problem of “sludge blood” remains unresolved. Symptoms such as high blood pressure as your body’s way of communicating with you to address the underlying causes. In the majority of cases, patients with high blood pressure simply need more water, more living nutrients (such as raw living plant juices), more omega-3 fatty acids and a sharp reduction in the consumption of animal products. Within as little as five days after embracing such changes, blood pressure normalizes as the blood itself becomes more hydrated and free to flow throughout the circulatory system. Your body knows all this. Western doctors know none of it. High Blood Pressure is treated as a disease unto itself with virtually no thought given to what underlying causes might be creating this measurable symptom. Your body is trying to heal itself all the time Both “asthma” and “high blood pressure” are fictional diseases. In other words, they don’t really exist as self-contained, standalone diseases. They are merely symptoms of something else that your body is attempting to balance. In order to activate your body’s innate healing potential, you must learn to listen to what your body is really asking for and give it those things instead of intervening with chemical medications, surgeries and toxic therapies like chemotherapy. Western medicine misinterprets virtually all expressions of physiology. If you wish to be healthy, you must learn to reinterpret your body’s messages in alignment with the true principles of health. Difficulty in breathing, for example, may simply be a sign of dehydration. High blood pressure may be a sign of dehydration or poor diet. Cancer is a sign of cellular miscommunication. A tumor is a sign that cells in your body aren’t getting the right message of when to stop dividing. (A tumor is merely a wayward cell that keeps dividing.) Cellular communication can be reestablished through changes in diet, environment, mental state and proper exposure to sunlight (among other things). So keep in mind that your body is always trying to heal itself. “Symptoms” of disease are often just cries for help from your own biology. The wise patient listens to those cries for help, attempts to understand what they mean, and addresses them through self-care. The unwise patient attempts to silence symptoms through chemical intervention: Pain killers, chemical pharmaceuticals, surgery and other interventions. Western doctors are not trained in proper symptom interpretation and rebalancing. They are only trained in symptom “management” which means reducing symptoms through artificial intervention. Why you are such a self-healing miracle Your body is one of Mother Nature’s most miraculous accomplishments. You possess unbelievably complex nanotechnology in your immune system. Your neurology exceeds the capabilities of the most advanced supercomputers in the world. Your sensory systems contain technology so advanced that even the most well-funded laboratories in the world don’t have machines that can match what you have right in your nose. Your reproductive system is a miracle of life; your bones are astounding structural engineering feats (or feets!); and your internal organs such as your heart and liver actually store their own memories and emotions. We know this because organ donor recipients often take on the memories and experiences of those from which the organs were originally harvested. In other words, you are a miracle of nature , and your body has such powerful healing potential available to itself right now that the only way you can even stop the healing is to interfere with it (with pharmaceuticals, for example). And yet, sadly, that’s what most people do: They numb their bodies with painkiller medications. They shut down their immune systems with chemotherapy. They shock their neurology with vaccines containing inflammatory chemicals. They interfere, override and interject all sorts of artificial chemicals, procedures and unnatural therapies. This is what shuts off healing . This is what leaves patients unable to heal in the way they are capable of healing — automatically, unconsciously and with zero effort. So if you really want to heal yourself, first recognize that you are a miraculous self-healing organism . And secondly, recognize that if healing is not happening, it may very well be because you have inadvertently interfered with the healing process by introducing artificial chemicals or other elements that hold your healing potential prisoner. Attaining health requires allowing healing to take place Healthy people aren’t healthy just because they eat superfoods and drink living juices all day long. They are healthy because they avoid poisoning their bodies with pharmaceuticals, artificial sweeteners, MSG and other processed food ingredients. They avoid the chemicals in cosmetics, personal care products, household cleaning products and lawn care products. They avoid consuming meat from animals who have been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. They keep their bodies as free from pollution as possible, and as a result, their innate healing powers are always working for them! You have exactly the same healing potential as I do. Your body can heal itself from cancer, from diabetes, from heart disease and from other “made-up” disease names like asthma and high blood pressure. All that’s really required is for you to embrace the healing potential you already possess, and then avoid all those things that interfere with it. If you believe in God and Creation, then take comfort in the idea that your body is created in God’s image, meaning that you are a perfect healing being as is He. If you believe in evolution and Darwinism, then take comfort in the idea that your body is the result of millions of years of evolution that have given you a successful, proven DNA blueprint for preventing sickness and disease — long before vaccines and western medicine ever came along. No matter what your philosophical approach, either way you still believe that your body is an amazing self-healing organism. And that’s good news because it means you already have the blueprint for powerful healing. Now simply activate it! This article series “Heal yourself in 15 days” continues in part three, right here on NaturalNews. In case you missed it, here’s part one: http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html