Immune Health
To understand immune health, let us first explore the Immune System. Inside your body there is an amazing protection mechanism called the immune system. It is designed to defend you against millions of bacteria, microbes, viruses, toxins and parasites that would love to invade your body. Proof of the workings of the immune system can be seen when you consider something that has died (not a nice thought but go with it!). Within hours of something dying, its body gets invaded by all sorts of bacteria, microbes, parasites. Once you die it only takes a few weeks for these organisms to completely dismantle your body and carry it away, until all that's left is a skeleton. Obviously your immune system is doing something amazing to keep all of that dismantling from happening when you are alive. The immune system works around the clock in many different ways; we only tend to notice the work that gets carried out mostly unnoticed when it fails for one reason or another. For example: • You catch a cold. Every day you inhale thousands of germs that are floating in the air; every once in a while a germ gets past the immune system and you catch a cold. The fact that you recover from the cold is a visible sign that the immune system was able to eliminate the invader after learning about it. • Each day you eat thousands of germs most of which die in the saliva or acid of the stomach. Occasionally one gets through and this results in food poisoning. Again your immune system eventually combats these effects. • If you cut yourself all sorts of bacteria can enter your body through the break in the skin. You immune system eliminates the invaders whilst the skin heals itself. Occasionally the immune system misses something and the cut gets infected. • Allergies are another example of the immune system working incorrectly – this time it is overreacting to certain stimuli. • Diabetes is caused by the immune system inappropriately attacking cells in the pancreas and destroying them With such an important role in the body, it is important that we try and boost the body’s immune system as much as possible and one way of doing this is ensuring the body is supplied with enough anti-oxidants. Antioxidants are protective and act as a defence against harmful free-radicals which are produced by everyday negative factors such as pollution and stress. Many people are unsure of what antioxidants are and why they are important in the body; one of the easiest ways to understand this is to look at what happens to an apple or a potato when the skin is removed - they go brown if left to the open air; they are being damaged by free radicals. (Now for the science bit) free radicals are molecules with electrons that are unpaired – i.e. unstable & reactive. Free radicals steal electrons, damage other molecules and in turn causing these molecules to become unstable and so the process begins again - a chain reaction. Going back to our brown apple or potato, we can stop this free radical damage by to putting lime or lemon juice onto the same apple or potato then it changes back to white again. The juice acts as an antioxidant.
So how does this relate to us as humans? During metabolic processes in the human body, free radicals are produced as a normal by-product of oxidation. A build up of free radicals can damage healthy cells so the body uses natural defence mechanisms to rid itself of free radicals, these are called antioxidants. Many factors can increase free radical production including stress, poor diet and pollution.
Herbalife has created two fantastic antioxidant products designed to support the body’s natural immune health:
Schizandra Plus
|
