Title: 
Keep Your Pumper Pumping

Word Count:
804

Summary:
Atherosclerosis and what it is.
How Atherosclerosis forms.
What causes Heart Attacks and strokes?
Nutrition and the part that it plays in the prevention of Atherosclerosis.


Keywords:
Heart Disease, Heart attack, Stroke, Atherosclerosis, Hardening of the arteries, Blockage, Platelets, circulation, Mangosteen, LDL, Cholesterol, pain


Article Body:
Clots cause 80% of all Heart Attacks and 83% of Strokes. Heart Disease is on the rise in this country as well as in places where the diet has been westernized like Japan and the Mediterranean.  More than anything else it is due to lack of proper diet and exercise.
 
Atherosclerosis is the hardening of the arteries and this is how it happens; flowing through your arteries you have plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets (needed for clotting) as well as some other essential cells for your health.  Due to lack of a good diet you also have things like Bad cholesterol (LDL), sugars from uncontrolled diabetes, saturated fats as well as other bad things for your health; all these negative ingredients begin to collect, stick together and build up on the interior of the artery walls; this is called plaque. The outer layer of the plaque that faces into the artery gets hard hence “hardening of the arteries”, the substances on the inside stays soft.  The outer hard layer of the plague will eventually crack and the soft interior will be exposed.  At this point the platelets (for clotting) do exactly what they are designed for; come to the crack to protect it, thinking it's an injury to the arterial wall, and form a clot; this creates even more blockage in the already narrowed artery. 

Several things can begin to happen at this point, you may have various forms of chest discomfort, numbness, burning or even a dull ache. You may develop poor leg circulation, abnormally cold hands and feet, shortness of breath, high blood pressure, fluttering of the heart (palpitations), nausea, weakness or dizziness and even impotence in men. Hardening of the arteries creates a blood flow restriction.  When this becomes more serious the clots can completely stop the flow of oxygen rich blood resulting in Heart Attack, Stroke and Death. It is important to reduce the risk of clot formation, but what is even more essential is to stop the production of plaque build-up in your arteries.  If you make a cake it takes various minor ingredients and one major ingredient; flour, without flour you do not have a cake.  When plaque is created in your arteries, it also takes one major ingredient; Bad Cholesterol (LDL). If you can stop LDL, plaque would not be formed. This is how bad LDL is created; Free-radicals are molecules or atoms that are missing an electron, they attack all kinds of cells in the body trying to steal an electron from them, free-radicals are the cause of all major disease; in the case of heart disease, free-radicals attack normal LDL cholesterol causing deformity or mutation, this makes the LDL cholesterol sticky.  Now all the negative ingredients come together and you have plaque stuck to the walls of your arteries.

Free-radicals can not be avoided; they are in air and water pollution, junk foods we eat, and in medications we take; in medications these free-radicals are called side effects. Side effects can lead to disaster inside your body and in some cases death.

The only thing that stops free-radicals are antioxidants; they are molecules that have a spare electron. The only place to find antioxidants is in natural sources.  Dietary supplements are needed for optimum health and contain antioxidants, eating natural foods that are un-processed is critical.  Processing our food destroys the antioxidants. Most plants have around 1,000 to 1,500 antioxidants each, which does not seem like a lot compared to the amount of free-radicals you are taking into your body every single day; about a billion. Vitamins and minerals also contain antioxidants.

With the discovery of a fruit from South East Asia called the Mangosteen, scientists have been in a buzz about the amount of antioxidants this fruit contains. The Mangosteen fruit has an amazing 25,000 antioxidants. This fruit has been studied in Universities and by scientists for the last 20 years; they have proved that this fruit has the most powerful and the largest number of antioxidants in nature to date. You can read all the studies by going to (pubmed at dot gov)  and typing in Mangosteen. The Mangosteen fruit has been providing thousands of people with medicinal benefits, due to super charged antioxidants called Xanthones. Two hundred Xanthones have been identified in nature, 41 are in the Mangosteen fruit alone and you can compare that to the Aloe Vera plant that contains only one Xanthone. One thing about Xanthones you need to know is that they must be consumed in their natural form. Xanthones can destroy more than one free-radical at a time, unlike normal antioxidants, due to carbon bonds that produce biological actions in the body.   Xanthones are stable, super charged anti-oxidants. For more information you can call toll free 1-888-374-4148 and listen to a message about the Mangosteen fruit and its powerful medicinal abilities.