It’s likely that you’ve heard about foods for helping reduce inflammation. Yet, nutritional supplements are often overlooked as an extremely important factor in treating inflammatory conditions. Unfortunately, most doctors consider them to be unnecessary as they believe that enough nutrients can be obtained from food. However, Dr Ray D. Strand, M.D., author of What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You
What’s interesting is that Dr. Strand once had a very negative attitude towards nutritional supplements. In the end, he turned to them to try and cure his wife’s severe fibromyalgia (characterized by continual total body pain, overwhelming fatigue, horrible allergies, and recurrent sinus and lung infections) as a last resort after all other medical treatments failed. Incredibly, she began feeling better within days of taking supplements high in antioxidant nutrients. Over the next three months, she continued to improve gradually, leaving Dr Strand astounded. He convinced some of his fibromyalgia patients to take nutritional supplements as well, and their health also began to improve.
The Need for Nutritional Supplements
Dr Strand decided to research the role of antioxidants, and the impact that oxidative stress has on the body as the underlying cause of chronic degenerative diseases.
What’s oxidative stress?
Just like oxygen can cause rust or an apple to turn brown, oxygen can also damage our cells. As the body takes in oxygen, it reduces it into water by transferring electrons, creating energy in the process. Each water molecule normally takes up four electrons. Most of the time, this occurs smoothly. However, sometimes, oxygen might escape before the conversion is complete.
When this happens the oxygen becomes unstable, with unpaired electrons. These particles are known as free radicals. In order to become stable, they need to pair up with an electron, which they readily rip from healty cell membranes causing structural changes.
If we don’t counteract this, over time, the result is cell destruction and ultimately, disease. Whichever part of the body that receives the most free radical damage is the first to produce symptoms and wear out.
Our bodies do have a natural defense system against free radicals. The body produces antioxidants, which are substances that can give up an electron to a free radical, to balance out its unpaired electron and neutralize it. However, there are a number of factors that can cause our bodies to make more free radicals than we can fight off. These include excessive exercise, excessive stress, pollution, cigarette smoke, ultraviolet sunlight, poor/toxic diet, drugs/medication and radiation.
As a result, we need to add nutritional supplements that are high in antioxidants in order to provide the level of antioxidants that our bodies need to restore balance, bring oxidative stress under control, and heal itself.
Chronic Inflammation and Oxidative Stress
When oxidative stress isn’t properly managed, it has the potential to cause significant levels of inflammation as the body attempts to get it under control. However, the body can only manage unhealthy levels of inflammation for a short period of time, as it hinders its natural immune system response.
As long as oxidative stress continues to be unmanageable, chronic inflammation will remain, leading to disease. All chronic diseases are interrelated as they contain an element of increased inflammatory response, often observed long before the disease is documented clinically. Inflammation of the arteries leads to heart disease. Inflammation of the bowel leads to Crohn’s Disease. Inflammation of the joints leads to arthritis. The underlying cause of asthma is also inflammation. There’s even an alarming diabetes and inflammation link as well.
Numerous scientific studies have investigated the link between oxidative stress, inflammation, and diseases including cancer.
In addition, low antioxidant levels have been shown to increase the risk of developing chronic inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. The clinical indicators of oxidative stress are also high in these patients, especially during disease flare-ups. (Refer to this study and this study).
Nutritional Supplements and Antioxidants as the Solution
A healthy immune system is most important in getting healing to occur. In order to achieve this, it’s necessary to provide the body with nutrients at optimal levels, which are much higher than Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) levels.
The actual optimal levels will depend on a person’s condition. Naturally, patients who are already suffering from a chronic inflammatory degenerative disease such as heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn’s Disease), or rheumatoid arthritis, will need significantly higher dosages in order to regain their health. This is because the body’s repair systems are so overwhelmed that they’re simply not able to keep up with and repair all the oxidative damage that’s occurring.
Recommended basic nutritional supplements, including antioxidants, include:
- Vitamin A (taken with a mixture of carotenoids)
- B Vitamins
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin E
- Bioflavinoid antioxidants
- Alpha-Lipoic acid,
- Co-enzyme Q10
- Glutathione
- a mineral complex (containing important minerals such as calcium, magnesium, selenium, zinc)
Choosing Your Nutritional Supplements
As Dr Strand states, when it comes to nutritional supplements, it’s important to choose your product wisely in order to get optimal results. The supplement industry is poorly regulated and the quality of products varies wildly. It’s critical to check product quality before purchase, and only buy top quality supplements that are complete and balanced, to have the best chance of redeeming your health.
As in any industry, the raw products used and how they’re processed affects their quality. If you take a look at the products available on the market, you’ll realize that it’s not possible to get all the recommended nutrients in a simple daily multi-vitamin. You’ll need to choose a specialist supplement. Several companies are now putting all of the nutrients and more together in one or two different pills.
Often, companies that market their products internationally usually have to follow higher standards than those companies who only sell to one country, such as the US or Canada. The most important thing to find out is whether a company follows Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) for pharmaceuticals. These companies produce what is called pharmaceutical grade supplements.
Such supplements aren’t cheap, but it’s very much a case of getting what you pay for.
Xtend-Life Total Balance Multi Nutrient Supplement
Based on the above factors, the nutritional supplement that we recommend is Xtend-Life Total Balance. In our opinion, it’s the most advanced supplement of its kind on the market, with specific formulations for both men and women as well as unisex. Each contains around 80 different ingredients in therapeutic dosages to restore your health. The pills are also enteric coated, to ensure that they are properly absorbed by your body.
Xtend Life, a family owned company based in New Zealand, only manufactures the highest quality specialist health supplements and provides an extensive amount of information about its manufacturing process. You can learn more in An Insider’s View of the Supplement Manufacturing Process Part 1 and An Insider’s View of the Supplement Manufacturing Process Part 2, as well as this article on Uncompromising Quality. It’s fascinating information.
What’s really appealing is that Xtend-Life offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee on all products. This means that you can try them absolutely RISK FREE.
