Why Your Heart Needs Antioxidant Protection

Your heart is truly a miraculous organ .  Even before your first breath , the muscles in the heart are working hard , circulating oxygen enriched blood to every part in your body and drawing oxygen depleted blood back into your lungs.  On average, your heart will beat 37,869,120 times each 365 days , year after year.  That's about 2 1/2 billion heartbeats for your lifespan .

Clearly , the heart is a powerhouse and needs to be looked after. You know , nobody can survive without a beating heart and indeed, with an average of two deaths a minute ,  40% of all the deaths in the U.S.) are the result of heart disease, usually from CAD- Coronary Artery Disease

Since it's the hardest working organ in your body, the heart muscles also need to produce an abundance   of energy and it's the massive level of energy production which renders the heart vulnerable to the problem of free radicals. So , your heart is an organ with a large requirement for antioxidants, the most valuable one is Glutathione.

The Heart's Energy Producers

Your heart's extraordinary ability to make energy is based inside each cell's power plants called Mitochondria.  Every cell in every organ possesses these tiny energy production sites .  Average cells have a few hundred mitochondria, but the cells in your heart have about 5,000! The power that's made in the cells, is created in the form of a compound known as ATP - adenosine triphosphate.  It's no surprise , making energy has a by-product .

The by- products of energy production are free radicals and with so many mitochondria in the cells of the heart , there will also be a matching population of by-products . Without help from antioxidant activity , free radicals can create a chain reaction within the cells that can destroy them and their components – like cellular DNA. 

Heart Disease and Coronary Artery Disease

Arteriosclerosis – Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)   commonly referred to as a hardening of the arteries or loss of arterial elasticity is a leading cause of Heart disease. It's been connected to a substance known as lipid peroxidase. That's what you get if the lipids in your heart become free radicals.  Lipids, are a large group of molecules that include waxes, sterols, fats and the fat soluble vitamins E, A, D & K.  In addition to   high levels of Free radicals, patients with CAD also have depressed amounts of antioxidants including Glutathione.  Without enough antioxidants to remove free radicals in the heart, this organ and its arteries will be subjected to a condition known as oxidative stress. 

Human bodies have originally been designed to deal with free radicals resulting from normal processes, however most people are subject to extra stressors that were not part of the original plan . They include environmental poisons (and especially tobacco smoke!), lousy diets, the hectic pace and emotional stress of everyday living and poor conditioning of our bodies from a lack of exercise.  We have placed our antioxidant resources at a dangerous disadvantage. 

The Benefits of Boosting our More  Glutathione and Antioxidant Reserves

As we age , our systems naturally begin to slow down. The mitochondria in our heart muscles gradually produce less energy and we also naturally begin to produce less glutathione – which is necessary for a healthy heart.  Increasing our glutathione supply can't make us live forever, but when  you think about how important your heart is , it must make sense to  eat better ,  live a healthier lifestyle and make a choice  to boost our natural production of glutathione.

Oral Glutathione supplements are not effective, but you can increase your glutathione with a glutathione precursor like MaxONE .