Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Do You Know How Stiff Your Arteries Are?



Similar to a kinked or defective hose, stiff arteries have trouble delivering blood to vital organs.

To improve cardiovascular health, health professionals often recommend making key dietary and lifestyle changes: healthy weight management, receiving optimal nutrition, getting quality amounts of sleep, managing stress, exercising regularly, and, of course, avoiding smoking.

What Is Arterial Stiffness?

Before we discuss the technology, let’s review the function and structure of arteries. Arteries are blood vessels that act like highways in our bodies, delivering oxygen and vital nutrients to various organs. They are made up of a variety of tissues including connective tissues rich in collagen (think: skin) and elastic tissue (think: muscles). Similar to public roads and highways, arteries will show signs of wear and tear over time.

Beyond aging itself, there are several dietary and lifestyle factors that can cause arteries to increasingly stiffen, lose their flexibility, and even harden. In fact, inflammation and increased blood pressure are the two major determining factors for arterial stiffness. Under these conditions, pressure within the arteries increases resulting in arterial stiffness and poor arterial health. You can think of an artery like a hose. If you run water through a hose as you normally would, the water smoothly flows with just the right pressure. However, when a hose is kinked or you step on it and block the flow, the water builds much higher pressure and can’t flow smooth as it should. Once released, that water will forcefully shoot out. The same analogy happens within the artery and the forceful blasting can be equated with damage to cells in the artery wall.

Knowing how revealing arterial health can be for overall heart health status, researchers have invented a new technology that allows scientists to obtain a precise map of arterial pressures in the body. It’s this technology that has Isagenix scientists excited, too—because it offers a way for us to show how well Isagenix products are at protecting blood vessels against the ravages of aging.

Dietary and Lifestyle Factors can Improve Your Arterial Health

Weight reduction alone can improve arterial health (1). Combining weight loss with increased consumption of dairy proteins (such as whey protein) is shown to produce even greater improvements in heart health (2,3). Relatedly, in a just-published study by researchers from Florida State University, obese women who combined exercise with a diet rich in milk proteins significantly reduced arterial stiffness compared to those who consumed carbohydrates in place of protein (4). Other heart-health promoting nutrients associated with improvements in arterial stiffness include vitamin D (5,6), long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (7,8), coenzyme Q10 (9), and polyphenols abundant in fruits and vegetables (10).

High quality products, like those from profightsports.com can provides you with the tools needed to support your arteries. Get optimal amounts of dairy proteins from Hydro whey protein powder, use Trim and Cleanse to help remove toxins and finally, supplement daily with The profight Multi vitamin.

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