My Healthy Habits

With the start of a new year, millions of Americans will be making pledges to either lose weight, or live a healthier lifestyle. One key to living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is to overcome the terrible effects of oxidative stress on the body.

Unfortunately, most people have never even heard of oxidative stress, therefore, they do not know the effects it can have on the body, nor how to combat it.

Dr. Myron Wentz, (an internationally recognized microbiologist, immunologist, and pioneer in the development of human cell culture technology and infectious disease diagnoses) said in one of his recent lectures that the populace is “living too short, and dying too long”. In other words, many people around the world are dying from chronic degenerative diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, MS, and the list goes on and on. These diseases seem to be developing in my patients at younger ages. Medications that the doctors give the patients can work – but at a tremendous cost to the body. Even though we place them on medications, we do not seem to change the course of their disease. What good does it do to live to a ripe old age of 93 if you haven’t been able to recognize your family or spouse for the last 10 years because of Alzheimer’s dementia, as was the case of former President Ronald Reagan? Look at Mohamed Ali or Michael J. Fox. Have we been able to effectively help them with their Parkinson’s disease?

Many people are no longer as concerned about the length of time they live, but instead what quality they will have in those years. Because of our stressful lifestyles and poor lifestyle habits, we are suffering earlier from these degenerative diseases. Michael J. Fox developed Parkinson’s disease at 32 years of age. Nearly 45% of our children who develop diabetes have the adult onset or type 2 diabetes. We are certainly living too short and dying too long. oxidative stress, COMBATABLE oxidative stress is a huge factor in this decline in American health.

oxidative stress in the body is caused by an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen and your body’s ability to detoxify the incoming “pollution” or easily repair the damage. When this process gets more stress than it can handle, your body begins to produce toxic substances to help combat the incoming oxidation, which end up being things like free radicals which literally begin breaking down your cells and making them function poorly.

Imagine, if you will, a car engine. When your car is brand new, the engine runs great, you get good gas mileage. But say you don’t change the oil, or buy the right kind of gas, sludge builds up, your car starts emitting smoke, the engine stutters and hesitates and sludge builds up. This is what happens to your body when your body is overwhelmed by oxidative stress.

The good news is that you can REPAIR the damage done to your body by oxidative stress. You can repair this damage by focusing on nutrition – giving your body the nutrition it needs to combat this stress. Adding foods high in anti-oxidants, such as blueberries, strawberries, broccoli, green peppers, green leafy veggies, and so on will certainly help. You can also take nutritional supplements if your diet leaves much to be desired. If you are looking into supplementation, though, be sure to chose a high quality supplements (like USANA’s Mega Anti-Oxidant) that is a pharmaceutical grade (not food grade, Centrum, Spring Valley and other popular supplements). Pharmaceutical grade supplementss will ensure that you are getting the same ingredients every time, and exactly what is in the bottle.