During exercise your metabolism generates not only energy from glucose with the mitochondria of your muscle cells, but also a by-product known as free radicals.  These are small oxygenated molecules that have only one purpose in their short life:  to grab electrons from their nearest neighbor and in so doing, destroy them.  Hence, muscle cells are destroyed and have to be replaced.

In addition to free radical oxidative damage, tissues such as your joints, tendons and ligaments can become damaged during hard exercise and competitive performance. This initiates the inflammatory response of the immune system leading to swelling, inflammation and pain. A certain amount of inflammation occurs with most exercise, although it is not always noticeable.

The first benefit of organic cocoa is its high antioxidant content(1).  It contains more flavanoids than highly antioxidant foods such as blueberries and tea(2), and can be used by more than  just athletes seeking to reduce the oxidative stress initiate by training and competition. Antioxidants destroy free radicals on sight – in fact as soon as they are formed. Not only do they prevent the oxidative stress of exercise, but they also prevent atherosclerosis, where free radicals render low density lipoproteins water-insoluble so that they precipitate from the blood and form cholesterol plaques on arterial walls.

With regard to exercise and recovery, however, the antioxidants in organic cocoa prevent damage to muscle cells and the proteins that form muscle tissue. The same phytochemicals also possess anti-inflammatory properties, and so help to reduce the effects of inflammation. It is ironic that the inflammatory response of your immune system is intended to protect your body tissues from damage, but doesn’t know when to stop and ends up causing swelling and pain. Anti-inflammatories are used to alleviate the effects of inflammation that can retard recovery after exercise. Experimental evidence indicates that organic cocoa contains powerful anti-inflammatory effects(3).

Another benefit of organic cocoa is that it can promote cardiovascular health. By dilating your arteries and other blood vessels it can improve blood flow, and hence help to maintain muscle oxygenation during exercise.  This in turn not only permits longer and more effective athletic performance, but also helps to convert exercise into more powerful muscle density. It regulates your hear rate and lowers your blood pressure, and generally promotes athletic prowess and effective exercise.

Another benefit that is not truly appreciated is offered by the neurotransmitter content of cocoa. Remember that great feeling you get after jogging a few miles?  Referred to as ‘jogger’s high’ it can be provided by the endorphin content of organic cocoa. Endorphins are ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitters and cocoa, in providing that plus others such as serotonin promote a positive outlook and a general feeling of well being.

These attitudes are important to athletes, and another that cocoa offers is anandamine, a chemical released by the brain that promotes relaxation and enables you to relax easier after extreme exercise, thus promoting more rapid recovery. Finally, phenylethylamine helps you to focus on the objective in hand, and together with the other neurotransmitters that cocoa either contains or promotes in the brain, can put you in the right mood for hard work and athletic achievement and improve the symptoms of fatigue, particularly of chronic fatigue(4).

1. British Journal of Nutrition (2009), 101, 931-940

2. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Dec 3, 2003.

3. J Cardiovasc Pharmacol. 2006;47 Suppl 2:S163-71; discussion S172-6.

4. Endocrine Abstracts (2006) 12 P68

Copyright 2010 LifeHealthSecrets

Electrons play a vital role in our cells to neutralize free radicals. As our cells produce energy, they also produce free radicals. Eating unhealthy foods (such as fried foods), breathing polluted air, drinking toxic water, extreme exercise and stress can also generate free radicals. Free radicals are molecules, atoms, or ions missing electrons in their outer orbits. This makes them highly reactive, and if they aren’t neutralized by an electron donor substance like an anti-oxidant, then they can wreak havoc in our cells – damaging DNA, causing cellular mutations, breaking down cellular function and potentially leading to cancer. Our cells experience electron loss on an ongoing basis, so it’s just as vital to keep on replenishing those electrons.

To fix this problem, why not just eat electron-donor foods such as fruits and vegetables high in anti-oxidants, maybe take a few anti-oxidant supplements? Yes, diet can help, but generally, as we get older, nutritious meals fail to vitalize us in the same way they did when we were younger. The body can no longer utilize the nutrients as efficiently. The problem is, that in order for your cells to be able to pull in the vital nutrients you’re consuming, they need to be sufficiently ‘charged,’ and cellular charge tends to get weaker as we get older.

A cell’s charge is formed by the osmotic pressure gradient from inside the cell to outside. The cell uses its sodium potassium pump to partly maintain this pressure gradient, keeping sodium ions out and potassium ions in. These two ions of electrons – sodium and potassium – are partly responsible for allowing electrons to move through your body and into your cells. If someone is depleted of electrolytes, you can give them all the nutrients in the world, but their body won’t be able to absorb them. Why? Their cells don’t have the electrical capacity to pull in the nutrients.

So cellular charge becomes the missing link to healthy aging. To reap the benefits of antioxidants, we must also strengthen the cell’s ability to draw them in. In order to address these two issues – cellular charge and electron loss over time – Life Health Secrets has designed Protein Extreme Energy and GSH-Ignite.  Protein Extreme Energy works primarily to increase cellular charge (though it also provides electron donors) and GSH-Ignite focuses on building your body’s natural supply of glutathione – an intracellular anti-oxidant hundreds of times more powerful than anything found in fruits, vegetables or most supplements. Together, Protein Extreme Energy and GSH-Ignite work to keep your cells charged and equipped to deal with free radicals.

Alix Thelemaque

Madeleine Thomas

Copyright 2009 LifeHealthSecrets

Understanding the oxidative system will provide us with the first method for increasing cellular energy. For cellular respiration to occur, oxygen must be drawn into the cells, where it’s used to produce energy (if you want to get specific, the mitochondria in our cells use it as a hydrogen acceptor during ATP production to produce water). How is oxygen drawn into the cell? Through the sodium potassium pump, which is what creates a cell’s ‘electrical charge’. The electrons around the outer membrane and inner nucleus of the cell, going in opposite directions, draw in the oxygen by means of diffusion.  So, a cell’s electrical charge controls the amount of oxygen that can be drawn in, and is in part responsible for how much energy your cells can produce.

This provides us with the first method of increasing cellular energy: increase a cell’s electrical charge. Note that electrical charge is also responsible for the removal of metabolic waste from the cell. If a cell’s charge is low, then metabolic waste accumulates and hinders cellular respiration. If things slow down enough, edema or water retention occurs – the cell’s osmotic pressure become so weak that it loses the ability to expel waste and old body fluids. When a cell’s charge is strengthened, metabolic wastes can be properly disposed of and cellular respiration increased.

The second method for increasing cellular energy can be understood through the reductive system. While oxygen is vital to cellular respiration, it also ‘oxidizes’ the cells, producing harmful free radicals that can damage cell function, respiration and DNA.  Reductive enzymes – with glutathione being the main SOD reductive enzyme – are what protect the cell from these free radicals. When a cell doesn’t have enough glutathione, it attempts to decrease ATP production so as to minimize the free radical damage. Therefore, increasing glutathione provides us with the second method to increase cellular energy. By increasing glutathione, you balance oxidation with reduction, and allow ATP to increase, thereby increasing your body’s cellular energy.

A thorough understanding of these two approaches to increasing cellular energy leads to understanding how two of Life Health Secrets’ supplements work. Protein Extreme Energy functions to increase cellular electron loads and therefore cellular charge – it adopts the first method for increasing cellular energy. GSH-Ignite adopts the second method – by encouraging healthy glutathione levels it allows ATP production to increase. As such, Protein Extreme Energy and GSH-Ignite take complementary routes to achieving the same goal – enhanced cellular respiration, leading to enhanced whole body energy for life.

Copyright 2009 LifeHealthSecrets