Aaaaah, youth! If only we could take
our acquired experience and the approach to life we’ve
adopted over the years and combine them with the resilient
and fit bodies we enjoyed when we were 20! Wouldn’t life
be significantly more enjoyable? With a little know-how and
a few key dietary supplements you can at least achieve a more
youthful appearance and energy level than you currently are
experiencing.
Declining Youth Hormones
One of the main factors in our deteriorating physical nature
is the fact that levels of critical hormones and other vital
chemicals in our bodies decline with each passing year.
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CoQ10—CoQ10 is an enzyme catalyst
that is essential to creating energy within the cell.
And just like any electrical appliance, without a source
of energy, we don’t function. Unfortunately, as we
age our ability to assimilate CoQ10 from foods like fish
and eggs slows way down. We begin to feel the affects but
can’t always identify the cause.
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Melatonin—Melatonin governs our
internal clock, telling us when to sleep and when to rise.
Sleep is absolutely essential to anti-aging because this
sustained period of rest is the time when our body manufacturers
many of the very chemicals we need to stay healthy like
growth hormones and immune factors. If you’re not
getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep, but find that you spend
too many nighttime hours tossing, turning and staring at
the clock, you may want to try melatonin.
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DHEA—DHEA is the precursor or parent
hormone of anti-aging hormones like estrogen, testosterone
and growth hormone. It helps to maintain muscle mass, skin
tone, and even bone health. However, for many and varied
reasons, the body makes significantly less DHEA the older
we get. This hormone first gained notoriety as a supplement
because it significantly promotes energy and sexual libido.
Powerful Anti-Aging Triad
Medical experts on anti-aging are learning how certain nutrients
help to appreciably assist the body in maintaining unimpaired
protein tissue, and this action has an enormous impact on health
and wellness. When you think of protein in the body, usually
the first thing that comes to mind is muscle. Remember, though,
that muscle tissue is so much more than impressively bulging
biceps or an attractively rounded gluteus maximus. The heart
is a major muscle, as are many other organs in the body. The
framework of the skin is made up of collagen, another protein
structure, as is the cartilage in all the joints. The following
three nutrients do an impressive job at keeping all protein
structures in the best shape possible.
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Alpha
Lipoic Acid—Plays a central
role in preserving protein and collagen and in providing
continuous energy to the cell. It snuffs out free radicals
in both the fat and water portions of a cell, and it is
the only antioxidant that can boost cellular levels of
the tripeptide glutathione, which is tremendously important
to overall health and longevity.
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Benfotiamine—Fat-soluble form of
vitamin B-1. It exerts more powerful effects in smaller
doses than its water-soluble cousin thiamin.
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Carnosine—Dipeptide of the amino
acids histidine and beta-alanine. Binds with excess levels
of copper in the body to prevent cellular oxidation.
For inspiring and thorough coverage of the anti-aging effects
of all three supplements, we enthusiastically invite you to
read “The Perricone Promise,” available
online or at your local bookstore.
The King and Queen of Antioxidants
An anti-aging discussion is incomplete without mentioning
two chief antioxidants, Vitamin C and Vitamin E.
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Vitamin C—Helps to keep us young
in two outstanding ways. First, it is necessary for making
collagen and elastin, which keeps skin firm, joints flexible,
and blood vessels strong. Second, it is a key nutrient for
maintaining a healthy immune system. The immune system is
a complex and ever-vigilant infrastructure designed to safeguard
us from the onslaught of free radicals that we’re exposed
to every day of our lives. It’s on a perpetual search-and-destroy
mission, seeking out proteins called antigens that don’t
belong in our bodies. If and when that task is accomplished,
the immune system sets out to build and strengthen the body.
Without an immune system, the game of life would be over
before it got started. As a versatile and powerful antioxidant,
vitamin C plays a huge role in keeping immune warriors in tip-top
shape.
- Vitamin E—We
often think of aging in terms of how we look and feel physically,
yet aging can affect our mental health, too, impairing ability
to reason and remember. Owing to its very nature as a fat-soluble
antioxidant, Vitamin E is one of the best nutritional allies
to promote brain health and cognitive function, since the
brain is largely comprised of fatty tissue, as are the protective
membranes of all cells in our body. Vitamin E has many other
noteworthy anti-aging applications, too, including health
of the cardiovascular system, the liver and the skin. Vitamin E intake should definitely be part of your diet,
whether from food or supplements.
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