Your body is a living biological organism just like any plant or other animal, all your organs, fluids and cells work as a team, if one part of the team is not at its best, your body becomes diseased and illness sets in.
Think of your body as a football team, you don?t have to know anything about football; all you need to know is that you have a home team and an opposing team. The football field is your life, from the moment of the first play, your birth, to the final goal, the end of your life. The opposing team, all the outside evading sources are attempting to cut your life short by stealing the ball and going in the opposite direction. I call this premature death due to disease or illness.
The opposing team is made up of some really big players, free-radicals and chronic inflammation, these players never get tired and they will never give up. From the moment you are born, free-radicals enter into your very young body with your very first breath and start their attack on your cells. Free-radicals are molecules or atoms that are missing an electron, they attack any cell they come in contact with and try to steal an electron from them. Free-radicals continue their attack until they succeed, in the process they damage the healthy cells they are attacking. Free-radicals are a part of life. They are in air and water pollution, they are in the processed foods we consume, free-radicals are also caused by traumas and injuries. Another source of free-radical damage comes from the medications we take in order to recover from illnesses; this particular free-radical damage from medications is called ?side-effects?. There are times in our lives when we need to take medications to combat a serious illness, but we must keep in mind that we have to boost our immune system during the time we are on these needed medications. This will minimize the side effect damage and aid in our long term recovery. Every time you breathe, fresh free-radicals are entering your body and start playing for the opposing team. The next opposing team member is chronic inflammation; scientists are calling this player a silent killer.
Our bodies are amazing organisms; if it senses an injury or illness it sends in a home team member, called inflammation, to aid in the defense of our body and help restore the area that is damaged. This is where the game gets a little complicated; free-radicals cheat, they don?t just damage a cell when they steal an electron, they actually mutate the cell or deform it, the damaged cell then becomes another free-radical; when the home teams healthy inflammation tries to go in and protect the now unhealthy cell that the body senses as damaged, the unhealthy cell turns on the inflammation and attacks it stealing an electron. Now the once healthy inflammation cells become mutated or deformed themselves and become chronic inflammation attacking healthy tissues inside our bodies. Boy oh boy, this starts a whole chain of continuing events. But remember this; the football game has two teams playing on the field.
You have to breathe everyday in order to live; now you know that every time you take a breath free-radicals are entering into your body and doing damage. You can however win the game if you take in large amounts of anti-oxidants to refresh your team players. Anti-oxidants are your really big players; they are molecules or atoms that have an extra electron that they will give to a free-radical. When this happens the free-radical no longer plays on the opposing team, instead it begins to play for you. This is what I call building your team forces, your team force is your immune system. Your team works together but your immune system is your coach, if your immune system is strong it can send in the needed players at the right time to fight any invaders that your body may encounter. But you have to feed your immune system; it requires necessary minerals and vitamins as well as large doses of anti-oxidants everyday. If you starve your immune system of the required nutrients, then the players on the field do not get the reinforcements they need to win. Most people start taking multi-vitamins when they get older, but parents should start their children on multi-vitamins as soon as possible and teach their children about nutrition starting at a very young age. People as young as 20 years of age are being diagnosed with diabetes in this country due to their poor eating habits. This is a very scary trend that is taking place. Many 30 year olds have heart disease also due to their poor eating habits, ?hardening of their arteries?. Scary!
What did you eat today? You are breathing in polluted air as you are reading this article, what type of defense did you provide your immune system with today? I hope you took your vitamins and minerals; did you eat any fresh fruits, or fresh vegetables? What about your children?
Most plants contain about 1,000 to 1,500 anti-oxidants, vitamins and minerals also contain large numbers of anti-oxidants. Vitamin C and E contain the largest amount of anti-oxidants. You can take as much vitamin C as you want without harming your body, but vitamin E has a recommended dosage per day, take much more and you can cause yourself problems, do not exceed any recommended dosage for your weight. Fish also have high numbers of anti-oxidants, try putting that into your diet a few times a week. Now think about this, you can destroy the anti-oxidants in your food through your cooking habits. Do not microwave your vegetables or fish, either steam or broil; do not cover in fats and fry. Foods are delicate and you can destroy any health benefits through any improper preparation. Foods are also biological organisms just like you. Now if you are like me and have a tendency to burn things, then do what I did and invest in a juicer and juice your vegetables and fruits, juice your way to healthier living. The amazing thing about juicing, there are so many combinations you can get your kids to drink their vegetables by adding sweet fruits to the mix. Wow!
Now let?s look at the numbers, because of our ignorance, we as a population of people, have caused serious pollution problems on this amazing planet we live on. So we end up taking in roughly one billion free-radicals per day, in the form of pollutants. Let?s see how many anti-oxidants we can take in; if we have one whole grape fruit and two eggs and one piece of toast for breakfast, and let us not forget our multi-vitamin, we will take in about 3,600 anti-oxidants. For a snack we have a banana and a glass of milk that?s about, let?s be generous, 1,800 anti-oxidants. Lunch we have fish with steamed spinach and one cup of whole grain rice, that?s about 4,000 anti-oxidants. Dinner comes and we do very well and have a nice cut of steak and some steamed broccoli with red onions and mushrooms, we now add a yam to that meal and we take in 9,500 anti-oxidants. For the day we did not do very well at all, only 18,900 anti-oxidants. We are losing the football game and we thought we were winning. What can we do? You can drink a lot more fruits and vegetables, by juicing them instead of trying to eat them, and you will not lose the anti-oxidants in these life saving foods.
There is also a newly discovered fruit from South East Asia called the Mangosteen Fruit.
The mangosteen fruit has be used in South East Asia for centuries for all types of aliments. To date there is a significant range of known traditional uses such as; anti-diarrheal, anti-inflammatory, pain control, treatment of infections, fever control, gastro intestinal problems, skin rashes and burns, headaches, anti-parasitic, musculo-skeletal and joint problems, control of blood sugar and diabetes, infections ? viral, bacterial and fungal, as well as mouth ulcers, prevention of atherosclerosis, dementia, anxiety and depression, cancer and anti-aging concerns, and there are many, many more. The li
st of health benefits continues to grow as more clinical studies and scientific research is done on this fruit.
For the last 20 years independent universities and scientists have been doing studies on the mangosteen fruit, they wanted to understand why the people of South East Asia did not suffer with the same diseases that we experience in this country. The serious diseases that are killers here in America are barley seen in South East Asia. As the scientists were beginning to study this particular fruit they found out it has the ability to help with disease control. A chemical compound called xanthones was discovered inside the skin of this fruit in record numbers, another amazing thing was the record number of anti-oxidants found in this fruit. The mangosteen fruit contains the highest number of anti-oxidants ever found in one food source, an unbelievable 25,000 per fruit. Wow!
In nature xanthones are very restricted in their occurrence, what I mean is look at the Aloe Vera plant, it contains only one xanthone, yet it is used for medicinal purposes in a variety of ways. When the news came out about how good the Aloe Vera was for burns and skin problems, people began to grow Aloe Vera in their yards and break pieces off when ever they had a skin problem. Over 200 hundred xanthones have been identified in nature to date and 41 of those are in the mangosteen fruit alone, that?s almost a full 25% of all the xanthones that are known.
What can xanthones do for you? Xanthones are a new class of chemical compounds with biologically active plant phenols. Xanthones are a unique, biologically active group of molecules with a six-carbon ring; this structure makes the xanthone very stable and also allows it to be extremely versatile. Each xanthone has a unique chemical formula that permits the xanthone to perform a specific biological function when consumed. Xanthones are so stable that they can defeat more than one free-radical at a time and render it harmless while still performing a biological function. Xanthones show several beneficial properties such as, anti-inflammatory, anti-tuberculosis, anti-tumor, anti-platelet stickiness and anti-convulsive. Scientific studies are making it evident that xanthones are responsible for a wide range of medicinal benefits experienced by people using this juice. The mangosteen fruit is a food, not a drug, and therefore dose not have the inherent dangers associated with medications. The thousands of people now drinking mangosteen fruit juice for medicinal reasons are reporting positive beneficial effects on their conditions. The mangosteen fruit has three components, the skin or pericarp, the fleshy fruit and the seeds, all of the components have the powerful xanthones and anti-oxidants, but the majority are in the skin or pericarp. One thing you should know is xanthones must be consumed in their natural form. The mangosteen fruit juice is the whole fruit ground up in order to make a juice out of it; nothing is wasted, so you receive the full benefit from this amazing fruit.
By changing your diet to a healthier menu and adding mangosteen fruit juice, you will enhance your team players by supporting your immune system so they can defend your body against the outside invaders.
You will have a wonderful quality of life!