HEALTH NEWS

by Lynne Gully

        July 2005

Stop Ageing Now – Part Five

 So, continuing with the theme of how to slow down the ageing process, I have included more extracts from Jean Carper’s book, “Stop Ageing Now”. In her book she quotes from scientists who have discovered the most basic reasons behind the ageing process and amazingly simple ways to slow it down or reverse it.

It’s very important to take responsibility for your own health and not to always rely on doctors and surgeons. We have all become conditioned to believe that taking a drug prescribed by the doctor will cure all ills. There is, of course, a place for drugs in certain life threatening situations but generally it is possible to stay healthy by adopting a healthy lifestyle. This means eating a diet full of fresh fruit and vegetables, oily fish, lots of brown rice and pulses and drinking plenty of fresh water. Exercise plays a big part but pounding away in the gym while eating an unhealthy diet will not result in weight loss or a healthy body. I can honestly say that after years of aerobic classes and hours spent in the gym, that yoga is absolutely the best form of exercise for both the body and mind. I feel stronger now doing yoga than when I was lifting weights in the gym. Yoga is a weight-bearing exercise and will help prevent the development of osteoporosis.

Certain foods such as wheat often make you feel depressed and lacking in energy. Eating bread makes many people bloated and results in weight gain. You just have to stop and think sometimes about the food you are eating. Toast for breakfast, cheese sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner with snacks of crisps and chocolate biscuits. This is all wheat-based food with very little good nutrition. Where are the vegetables in this sort of diet?

People on this sort of diet may feel depressed without knowing their food is the main cause. They go to the doctor and are prescribed anti-depressants. People on high salt diets or diets high in saturated animal fats often develop high blood pressure or high cholesterol. They go to the doctor and are prescribed drugs for their condition. These types of drugs are called lifestyle drugs as they only serve to suppress the symptoms caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. They do not cure the condition because if the drugs are stopped, the symptoms return. It is only by changing your lifestyle that you will reverse the condition and will result in you feeling much better.  Of course, most people prefer to take the easy route with a visit to the doctor, as changing your lifestyle takes a lot of effort and planning. I made the effort to change my eating habits about seven years ago and I have never looked back. I now have more vitality and I’ve not taken any medical drugs or over-the-counter painkillers since then.

I firmly believe there is a place for nutritional supplements in a healthy diet to counteract the ever-increasing effects of pollution, the increase in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers and the lack of minerals in our soil. Supplements mean exactly that. They should be used to supplement a healthy diet, not taken instead of a healthy diet. Many foods tested in 1950 were tested again in the year 2000 and the results showed a reduction in the minerals and vitamins contained in those foods sometimes as high as 75%.

In the previous newsletters (parts 1-4) I covered the benefits of taking antioxidants (vitamins C and E, Beta carotene and minerals zinc and selenium), B vitamins, Ginkgo Biloba, Omega 3 fish oil or flax seed oil, Co-enzyme Q10 and how to protect your skin inside and out. If you want copies of any previous newsletters you can visit my website at www.optimumhealth.co.uk and click on the link for Newsletters.

Why Cutting Calories Can Stop Ageing

Calories are the enemies of youth because converting them into energy requires more oxygen. This triggers more free radicals that lead to cell damage, disease and accelerated ageing. So make every calorie count and try to avoid food with empty calories such as sugar. Of all foods, fruits and vegetables have the most antiaging substances for the least calories. As the old saying goes “fat people don’t make old bones”. So cut your calories, lose weight and live longer. Sounds good to me.

Contact Lynne at lynne.gully@optimumhealth.co.uk or tel: 0030 28920 42356

Why You Need Garlic to Stop Ageing

Garlic is one of nature’s antiaging wonder drugs. Take it in food or pills. If you like garlic, eat it raw or cooked, crushed or cut. If you don’t like garlic or don’t want garlic breath, take garlic supplements.

For nearly five thousand years garlic has been revered as a health tonic and virtual cure-all. The garlic bulb is packed with many antioxidants which guard cells from damage and your entire body from premature ageing.

“Every morning, after we do our yoga, we each take a clove a garlic, chop it up and swallow it whole.” Sarah L. (age 104) and A. Elizabeth (age 102) Delany in their book Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.

People who eat garlic are less apt to get certain cancers, such as stomach and colon. Studies in China and Italy find that garlic and onion eaters have about half the risk of stomach cancer. New evidence from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York finds that garlic compounds actually stifle the growth of cancer cells.

Garlic has been shown to lower high cholesterol whether eaten or taken in supplement form. You need take garlic for over a month to get cholesterol-lowering benefits.

Further, garlic lowers blood pressure. In one double-blind German study, the equivalent of two garlic cloves daily, reduced blood pressure from 171/102 to 152/89 after three months.

 Garlic fights heart disease by discouraging the formation of dangerous clots or “thinning the blood”. Garlic blocks blood platelets from sticking to each other or the walls of arteries, a first step in artery clogging.

Even if you have heart disease or a heart attack, eating or taking garlic may help save you. Pioneering garlic researcher and cardiologist, Arun Bordia, says garlic seems to help dissolve blockages in arteries, partially “healing” arteries damaged by atherosclerosis. He documented that eating garlic after a heart attack helped prevent subsequent heart attacks and deaths.

Nature’s Sunshine Hi-Potency Garlic provides 400mg of standardized high potency garlic in each tablet, which is equivalent to 1,200mg of fresh garlic. Hi-Potency Garlic is unlike so-called “odorless garlic” supplements, which has been stripped of the active ingredients. NSP uses only a pure garlic, carefully processed to maintain maximum allicin-alliin potential. A supplement’s allicin-alliin content is the most accurate means of measuring garlic potency. Each Hi-Potency Garlic tablet is coated with chlorophyll to preserve freshness and insure the contents are absorbed in the intestinal tract, thereby avoiding any belching or garlic odor on the breath. Hi-Potency Garlic also adds the SynerPro concentrate of cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage and chinese cabbage) and carrot, red beet, rosemary, tomato, turmeric and bioflavonoids (from citrus fruits), for added antioxidant protection.

Garlic High Potency - Stock no 292

Your Arteries Don’t Need to Grow Old

Hardening of the arteries is a supposed curse of old age, but it does not come from normal ageing. It is primarily a consequence of diet and lifestyle common in Western industrialised countries, where it is the number-one cause of ageing, heart disease and death.

Exactly why arteries deteriorate is a complex biochemical puzzle, but scientists now recognise that free radicals and antioxidants have a big hand in it. When you regularly take in too many free radicals, as in animal fat and smoking, and too few antioxidants, as in vitamins, minerals, fruits and vegetables, your arteries become littered with debris embedded in artery walls.

Major Ways To Keep Arteries Young

·         Restrict saturated animal fat, dairy fats, margarine and omega-6 fats such as corn oil, sunflower oil and safflower oil.

·         Restrict grilled, roasted and fried meat as they contain free radicals that attack artery walls.

·         Take 400 IU daily of vitamin E – a must for keeping arteries young and maybe even making them younger.

·         Eat foods high in CoQ10 such as sardines, and/or take CoQ10 supplements. CoQ10 is a strong antioxidant that may help prevent as well as reverse the cumulative effects of years of cellular damage in an ageing heart.

·         Eat fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, sardines and tuna fish rich in omega-3 fats as they can improve heart function by helping prevent irregular heartbeats that can trigger sudden death.

·         Eat fruit and vegetables high in Vitamin C such as blueberries, oranges, red grapes, red grape juice and strawberries. Also take at least 500 mg daily of Vitamin C as a supplement.

·         Eat foods high in glutathione such as avocado, asparagus and broccoli.

·         Eat garlic as it helps to keep dangerous blood clots away, or take a garlic supplement.

·         Use olive oil as it is a monounsaturated fat and helps to reduce cholesterol.

·         Go easy on sodium (salt), which can stiffen and age arteries prematurely.

·         If you drink alcohol, make it red wine in moderation – maximum of a glass or two a day – which helps discourage blood clots.

Nature’s Sunshine Products

·         Antioxidant Arsenal – Stock no 4033

·         Vitamin E400 IU with Selenium – Stock no 1667

·         CoQ10 plus – Stock no 1796

·         CoQ10 30mg – Stock no 4089

·         Omega 3 Fish Oil Capsules – Stock no 1609

·         Vitamin C chewable 250mg – Stock no 1726

·         Vitamin C 500mg – Stock no 1649

·         Vitamin C 1000mg Time Release – Stock no 1635

To order Nature’s Sunshine Products – call the Order Hot Line on 08458 40 50 60 or the main telephone line on 01952 671600.