Inflammation
Most of us have some idea what inflammation is. If a wound gets hot, turns red, hurts, and swells, we recognize that inflammation is at work. In this instance, inflammation is a beneficial process, serving to immobilize the area of injury as the rest of the immune system mobilizes to heal.

Regardless of the source of assault on our bodies, inflammation is the first-alert mechanism that calls into action the cells responsible for surveillance and protection, heralding them to go to work and limit the damage. These cells attack and destroy the invaders, then clean up the damaged cells, repairing and clearing as they go, until a healthy state is restored. As such, inflammation is your body’s first line of defense against injury or infection.

Silent Inflammation

Unlike the above example, researchers now recognize another kind of inflammation: silent inflammation, or SI. This type of internal inflammation has an insidious nature and is the culprit behind the many chronic diseases that are primarily caused by poor lifestyle habits and environmental pollutants. The chronic and continuous low-level demand that silent inflammation places on the body’s defense systems results in an immune-system breakdown. In SI there is no regulated progression of a healthy inflammatory response, no planned sequence from the first alarm to the formation of the last new cell. Many of these reactions become intermingled and hamper one another.

The body tissues themselves may lose their ability to recognize cells that are “self ” from those that are not, and the body may mistakenly identify its own cells as foreign invaders. This internal programming error then continues to trigger and retrigger immune responses, setting the stage for autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and scleroderma. The result is chaos, and what is even more disturbing is that this process may be happening year after year without our even being aware of it.

We now know that inflammation plays a central role in the chronic illness that remains our number-one killer: coronary artery disease. In fact, elevated markers of silent inflammation, such as homocysteine, CRP, and Lp(a), have been found to be more predictive of heart disease than such traditional risk factors as elevated cholesterol levels (50 percent of those hospitalized for heart disease have normal cholesterol levels).

A landmark study showed that people with high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), one of the cardinal markers of inflammation, were over four times more likely to have heart attacks than those with low CRP levels. Researchers then began to link C-reactive protein, along with other markers of inflammation, to a wide range of chronic diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, and even cancer. Chronic silent inflammation is now accepted as a warning that something is drastically out of balance in a person’s overall health.

Although chronic inflammation can cause a variety of disorders, many of us (and unfortunately this includes many physicians) do not know the warning signs of this kind of inflammation or the best ways to treat it. This knowledge is critical because, if a person has one inflammatory condition, the odds that he or she will develop another condition increase dramatically. Researchers have discovered, for example, that a woman with rheumatoid arthritis has a 100 percent increased risk of experiencing a myocardial infarction. And other recent research has demonstrated that higher CRP levels are also associated with age-related macular degeneration, so the same individual can have more than one condition caused by SI. For all these reasons, slowing down this chronic inflammation syndrome is vital to successful age management, so it is crucial that everyone becomes aware of it, understands its causes, and takes measures to stop it.

Becoming aware of your body’s own inflammation can also be accomplished by measuring oxidative stress levels. The Oxidata Test is the world’s first and only non-invasive urine test that measures the amount of free radicals or oxidants in the body within five minutes.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Everyone has, by now, heard of free radicals and the importance of antioxidants in the diet. This test enables the user to measure the amount of oxidative stress the body is enduring and the results of antioxidant intervention. Many, if not all diseases, afflict the body through oxidative damage. The free radical theory of aging says that it is the primary cause of aging itself.

Free radicals are simply unpaired electrons. Electrons like to be electrically neutral. When they are not they quickly look for something to latch on to thereby creating a new molecule. This is how many chemical reactions take place. Without these oxidation-reduction reactions, not only would life not take place, but many of the other important functions of the body wouldn’t either. For example, white blood cells often kill their bacterial or viral enemies with free radicals.

Free radicals are like fire. Properly confined they are beneficial to the body and, fortunately, the body has means to confine them. These are called antioxidants, and they look for excess free radical activity and neutralize it. It is only when free radicals become unconfined and excessive and start attacking normal, healthy tissue that disease takes place. This happens when antioxidant activity is inadequate, hence the importance of maintaining proper antioxidant activity in the body.

This test measures the amount of a free radical called malondialdehyde (MDA) in the urine. It is a measure of the overall antioxidant capacity of the body. This test is 40 to 50 times more reliable than a MDA blood test. Accuracy is within the range of 90%.

The test is conducted by comparing the color change in a urine sample with a chart. Rather than guessing if an antioxidant program is working or whether it is working too well, this test provides a scientific measurement of results. The test is best taken as a before and after snapshot of the effectiveness of antioxidant intervention through supplementation or dietary and exercise changes.

GlutaSource offers the most effective, reduced glutathione in easy delivery methods.  Glutathione from GlutaSource assists in preventing ROS damage by “scavenging” free radicals. To place an order please visit our products page or call us at 941.330.8553.