In answer to a question asked the other day about how to soften arteries we thought this might be helpful.

Hardening of the arteries or Arteriosclerosis (Atherosclerosis is a specific name given to the condition caused by arterial plaque)  (also known as Arteriosclerotic Vascular Disease or ASVD) is the condition in which an artery wall thickens as the result of a build-up of fatty materials such as cholesterol.

The medical fraternity use these long names to help them describe what they are talking about but sadly we commoners (some would call us patients) don’t understand what the names really mean and we begin to be disconnected from our health.

The arteries need to be elastic to ensure good blood flow and through years of poor diet and a lack of exercise they become less flexible.

At first sight cholesterol seems to be the culprit  – but in actual reality it is just an easy target that facilitates the sale of drugs that can artificially lower the levels in the blood stream. The question that arises from that is should be using these products in the first place. For more on this engaging debate some of the best evidence is presented by NASAs Dr Duane Graveline MD on his site www.spacedoc.net

Let us assume that the reason the arteries are becoming inflexible is because of the presence of an internal arterial plaque. This plaque is commonly thought to be purely cholesterol whereas in fact it is cholesterol and many other compounds. Several years ago I was given an explanation that made a great deal of sense.

As we eat foods that contain simple starch which turns into glucose in the bloodstream it effectively alters the blood chemistry making it acidic which in turn begins a very slow process where the calcium, the primary mineral in the bones, is leached out of the bone structure. The amount of calcium that can remain in suspension or dissolved in the blood is very small and consequently the body has a mechanism where any excess calcium is placed adjacent to the artery wall. This calcium is effectively held in place by cholesterol. It’s a bit like making a brick wall, the bricks are the calcium and the mortar is the cholesterol. This process continues day by day molecule by molecule at the arterial plaque inside the arteries gets thicker and thicker and obviously less flexible.

The good news is that it’s actually relatively easy to fix.

Step one — stop eating simple carbohydrates like bread, pasta, potato, rice etc. These foods simply raise the blood glucose level and perpetuate the problem. By removing them from our diets the blood reverts to its normal chemistry and with a little help the process can be reversed. Replace them with home produced juices, raw fruits and vegetables.

Step two — by adding a very high quality food matrix vitamin and mineral complex to your diet over a protracted period there is every reason to believe that the blood chemistry can be restored and the process reversed. This process is known as chelation and is relatively simple. You will need to drink plenty of water during this time. Other things that have been shown to help are  polymethoxylated flavones (PMFs), delta, gamma and alpha tocotrienols. The vitamin and mineral we recommend is Catalyst (available on Request on 0800 695 5295) or by e mail.

Step 3 — exercise more. A simple 10, 20 or 30 minute walk daily will work wonders.

Swine Flu Could Combine With Hospital Superbugs to Kill Thousands

The combination of H1N1 swine flu and antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria could lead to a deadly form of pneumonia that kills half the people it infects within three days, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Researchers analyzed two patients who had experienced bacterial pneumonia that led to blood poisoning, concluding that the culprit was community acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA), the form of MRSA that occurs outside of health care settings like hospitals and nursing homes.

“The threat from CA-MRSA in the USA/UK is very serious concern, especially if there is a flu epidemic as this could trigger a large number of cases of necrotizing pneumonia, which has a mortality rate of more than 50 percent in 72 hours,” said Richard James, of the University of Nottingham.

MRSA is already a highly lethal bacteria, because its resistance to first-line antibiotics makes it more likely to cause complications such as blood or organ infections, boils or even skin necrosis. The bacteria kills more people each year in the United States than AIDS.

CA-MRSA cases are sharply on the rise, with more and more cases being reported in settings gyms, schools and prisons.

“The concern is that this may be the start of an exponential increase as we saw with hospital MRSA infections in the 1990s,” James said. “It took the UK 13 years to get to grips with hospital-acquired MRSA infections; we are not equipped to deal with large numbers of CA-MRSA infections in the community.”

CA-MRSA appears to be particularly likely to cause pneumonia when it infects people who are recovering from a flu infection.

“Bacterial pneumonia following influenza can be very serious and in some cases fatal,” said MRSA expert Mark Enright, of Imperial College London. “CA-MRSA pneumonia is particularly dangerous due to the rapid, aggressive nature of the infection and the difficulty in providing effective chemotherapy. The emergence of pandemic influenza and increased prevalence of CA-MRSA in many countries may cause increased morbidity and mortality in infected individuals.”

Sources for this story include: www.telegraph.co.uk; news.bbc.co.uk.

by David Gutierrez, staff writer Natural News

Obesity Rates - Men and Women

Now the interesting thing is that obesity rates remained almost static until the emergence of the figures in the late 1970s. For years the rates had been reasonably static 15-20% for probably a hundred years. In the early to mid 1980s, coincidentally very close to emergence of the belief that fats in foods were very bad, the rates began to rise massively. Why was that?

We were being told to eat less animal fats and more so called “low-fat-spreads”. The fat in foods was often replaced by sugar and that is part of the problem – excess sugar leads to a gain in stored glycogen in fat cells. In my opinion the culprit is not fat but hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats and oils used in industrial food processing.

The estimates for 2010 suggest that for the UK that obesity rates for men and women will exceed 40% and including those overweight the overall figures come out close to 70% either overweight or obese.

Link the carrying of excess fat around the waits as one of the main indicators of elevated cancer risk and suddenly being overweight doesn’t just accelerate ageing but actively shorten life and reduce quality of life accordingly.

Reduce the fat content in our bodies and we should also see the reduction in the rate of ageing.