Are You Affected By Oxidative Stress?

What Are Free Radicals?

Free radicals are created in the body in almost any cell action. They're also created as the body eliminates toxins.

Free radicals are unstable charged molecules that need to combine with another stable molecule. When the two combine they create a new stable molecule.

This is a natural process and your body's immune system uses them to destroy viruses and bacteria. So they're a required support for the rest of your body's defence mechanisms.

With our current rushed lifestyles and our intake of highly processed food and drink free radicals can build up and cause harm to your body. Because the free radicals may run out of viruses, bacteria or other foreign bodies to attack so will attack your own body's cells.

Unwanted free radical build-up and attack of healthy cells is known as "oxidative stress".

Damage to your body's cells can cause any number of diseases including accelerated aging, and a number of other illnesses, such as:

• Alzheimer's


• Asthma


• Arthritis


• Cancers


• Cataracts


• Crohn's disease


• Diabetes


• Eczema


• Parkinson's

Excess free radicals may also contribute to the following problems:

• Autoimmune diseases


• Bowel disease


• Kidney diseases


• Liver diseases


• Lung diseases


• Skin conditions

How Are Free Radicals Created?

The primary source of free radicals is after your body cells creation of energy. Some of the oxygen used in the process is not consumed. Consequently it becomes a free radical.

Most heavy metals absorbed into your body's tissues are charged and may also have the effect of creating free radicals in your body. These metals include everyday one such as aluminium, calcium and iron.

Our modern life style can generate stress, which in turn releases hormones which produce free radicals.

Restricted or low blood supply, such as during heart attacks, strokes or injury can cause free radical production.

External factors such as pollution, UV, common chemicals and pesticides can also create free radicals.

Are You Under Oxidative Stress?

So now we know just how much free radical activity is going on in our bodies what should we do about it?

We really need to know whether we're under "oxidative stress" before we start treating ourselves for excess free radicals.

One marker of excessive free radical activity is the level of Malondialdehyde (MDA) which is created by "lipid peroxidation". MDA molecules are particularly potent in bonding you're your body's genetic blue print (DNA) during periods of "oxidative stress". This causes a mutation of the DNA which may result in various health issues, such as cancers, arteriosclerosis, cardiovascular problems, arthritis.

The Ultimate Sauna Company has a simple and inexpensive urine test that can show the level of free MDA in your body.

The test can be done at home and you don't even have to send it away to be analsyed as the test results show up after just a few minutes.

So when you find out whether you have excessive free radicals, what then?

Antioxidants are used in the body to bond with the free radicals and prevent their action on your body's cells.

Naturally occuring antioxidants can be absorbed from any of:

• Barley


• Broccoli


• Cabbage


• Brussels sprouts


• flax hulls


• Ginkgo biloba


• Green tea


• grapeseed extract


• Kale


• pycnogenol


• Spinach


• Tumeric


• Wheatgrass


• Other green plants

Other sources of antioxidants are thought to come from:

• Vitamins A, C and E


• Glutathione


• Selenium


• Zinc


• CoQ10


• Alphalipoic acid


• DHEA


• Melatonin


• EDTA

All these require effort to find and use and you're not even sure if you're taking the right amounts of food or other sources of antioxidants.

An infrared sauna has been proven, with before and after results, to reduce the levels of heavy metals and other toxins in your body. Removing their ability to create free radicals gives you a better chance of not falling prey to the degenerative diseases we looked at before.

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