It’s your ” Little Engine That Could”. And it does, everyday of you life.Your heart is truly a wonderous design . Even before your birth , the muscles in your heart are working hard , pumping oxygen enriched blood to each part in you and returnin oxygen depleted blood back into the lungs. On average, a heart will beat 37,869,120 times each year , year after year. That’s around two and a half billion heartbeats for your lifetime .
Obviously , the heart is a powerhouse and needs to be looked after. As you already know , no one 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 caused by heart disease, the leading cause of which is CAD- Coronary Artery Disease
Since it’s the hardest working organ in the body, the heart muscles will produce a continuous supply of energy and it’s this massive level of energy production which renders the heart vulnerable to the problem of free radicals. Hence , a heart has a high requirement for antioxidants, the most valuable of which is Glutathione.
The Heart’s Energy Factory
Your heart’s extraordinary ability to produce energy is found inside each cell in the cellular power plants called Mitochondria. Each cell in every organ has these tiny energy producing sites . On average, most cells have a few hundred mitochondria, but the cells in your heart have about 5,000! The power that’s produced in the cells, is created as a substance known as ATP or adenosine triphosphate. But , energy production has a price .
The by- products of creating energy are damaged molecules – free radicals and with so many mitochondria in the cells of the heart , there will also be a matching population of oxy-radicals . Without the intervention of antioxidants , free radicals will develop a cascading reaction within the heart cells that will kill them and their components – including the cellular DNA.
Heart Disease and Coronary Artery Disease
Arteriosclerosis – Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) which is commonly called hardening of the arteries or loss of arterial elasticity is one of the main causes of Heart disease. It has been linked to something known as lipid peroxidase. That’s what happens when the lipids in your heart are converted into free radicals. Lipids, actually are a large group of molecules that include waxes, sterols, fats and the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E & K. In addition to elevated levels of Free radicals, patients with CAD also have reduced levels of antioxidants including Glutathione. Without a sufficient reserve of antioxidants to clean out free radicals in the heart, it and its arteries will eventually suffer from oxidative stress.
Human bodies have originally been designed to manage free radicals created by normal processes, however most of us are subject to extra stressors that weren’t part of the original plan . They include environmental poisons ( like tobacco smoke!), poor diets, the hectic pace and induced stress of everyday living and poor conditioning of our muscles from a lack of exercise. We have put our antioxidant reserves at a dangerous disadvantage.
Why You Need More Glutathione and Other Antioxidants
As we age , our systems naturally begin to slow down. The mitochondria in our cells inevitably produce less energy and we also naturally begin to produce less glutathione – which is necessary for a healthy heart. Boosting glutathione supply will not make us live forever, but given how hard your heart works , it must make sense to eat better , live a healthier lifestyle and make a choice to boost our supply of glutathione.
Oral Glutathione supplements are not effective, but you can increase your glutathione with a glutathione precursor like Cellgevity.