The Importance of Antioxidants In Disease Prevention

Everyone is exposed to free radicals which are detrimental to your health and are known to accelerate the aging process. Free radical levels rise in the body during rigorous exercise and from exposure to pollutants, radiation, UV light and smoking. During infection and chronic inflammation, massive amounts of nitric oxide and superoxide radicals form in immune cells to fight off invading bacteria and viruses. Made in excess, these oxidants can harm and combine to form other toxic chemicals that produce further damage in brain cells and DNA.

New clinical studies appear every month revealing the link between obtaining adequate amounts of antioxidants and preventing heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes, alzheimers, cataracts, macular degeneration and other diseases.
Recommended Antioxidants
Antioxidant defenses that help protect the body from free radical damage include the vitamins C and E, carotenoids, B complex vitamins, zinc, selenium, bioflavonoids, melatonin and Pycnogenol.

Femhealth's Advanced Eye & Body Formula has both the amounts and forms of the nutrients found to be most efficacious in preventing cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease and other degenerative health conditions.

Folic Acid and other B vitamins seem even more of a wonder drug than anyone suspected: Already known to prevent severe birth defects and heart attacks, they may also ward off broken bones from osteoporosis, two major studies suggest.

The findings underscore doctors' long-standing recommendation that people take multivitamins. B vitamins are known to reduce levels of homocysteine, an amino acid already linked, at high levels, to an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and Alzheimer's disease. Now research shows high levels of homocysteine at least double the risk of osteoporosis-related fractures.

A report from Holland found that the risk of such fractures was twice as high in men and women with homocysteine levels in the top 25 per cent, compared with those with lower levels. Similarly, a U.S. study found the risk nearly quadrupled in the top 25 per cent of men and nearly doubled in the top 25 per cent of women, compared with the 25 per cent with the lowest levels.

“The basic way to keep your homocysteine down in a healthy range is to have plenty of B vitamins,” said Dr. Douglas Kiel, “a multivitamin, taken once a day, would bring a person's homocysteine levels below the danger point.”