The Proven Way to Keep Your Arteries Soft and Supple

As we get older, our arteries become increasingly stiff. They lose their elasticity. The old-timers called this problem "hardening of the arteries."

Here’s the problem with hardened arteries. The lost elasticity significantly decreases circulation. It is also one of the major factors for premature aging, not to mention high blood pressure, strokes, and heart disease.

That’s why learning how to keep your arteries flexible and young as you get older is so important.

Now, an amazing new study points to one of the most effective ways to do just that. It’s both effective and simple. This new finding could be one of the most important nutritional discoveries in recent times.

First let me explain how this arterial elasticity thing works. It all starts with your heart. Your heart is an absolutely marvelous pump. But it is an unusual pump. The pumps people make are centrifugal pumps. They pump out a continuous and steady volume of fluid. But the heart is different. It pumps out blood one beat at a time. With one strong beat, it pumps out a volume of blood. Then it stops its pumping action while it fills up again for the next beat. And then it repeats the process over and over again. But this presents a problem for the cells. How are they going to get the oxygen and nutrients that they need so desperately during the time in between the beats? That’s when the elasticity of your arteries becomes so important.

Your arteries are not like pipes. Pipes are rigid. They have no give to them. If you pumped out a large amount of fluid all at once through a pipe, since it has no give, the pressure would increase and it might break. But arteries are not like that – thank God. They are elastic. They can give. So when the heart pumps out the blood, the arteries expand to almost twice their size to accommodate it. This does two things.

First it prevents the pressure in the arteries from getting too high and rupturing the blood vessels. And second, when the heart relaxes to fill up again, the expanded arteries are elastic and they squeeze down and continue to pump blood to the cells. That way, the cells get blood both when the heart pumps and when it relaxes between pumps. Incredible! But this marvelous system breaks down as the arteries lose their elasticity. And that’s why maintaining good arterial elasticity is so important.

Decreased arterial elasticity is an especially significant cardiovascular disease risk factor for obese people. So recently some researchers enlisted a group of 25 obese adult men and women. They put half of them on a weight loss diet, which was 25% less calories than their bodies needed. The other half they put on the same diet, but also gave four grams of fish oil supplements every day. They did that because studies in the past have suggested that the fatty acids EPA and DHA in fish oils improve the elasticity of arteries. The study went on for three months. Before and after the study, the researchers measured the elasticity of both large and small arteries using high-tech pulse contour analysis. What they found was important for you and me.

Both groups had about the same reduction in body weight. But only the group taking the fish oil supplements had an improvement in their arterial elasticity. That’s an incredible finding after only three months of therapy! But that’s not all.

The weight loss resulted in decreased blood pressures and blood triglyceride levels in both groups. But the group taking the fish oil had a significantly greater reduction in both of these measurements as well. High blood pressure and triglycerides are important indicators of metabolic syndrome. And metabolic syndrome is strongly associated with loss of arterial elasticity.

You know me. You know I put a healthy diet, rigorous exercise, and hormone replacement at the top of my list for staying young and strong even into your 70s and 80s. But that’s not all I recommend. I also want everyone to take a scoop of Super Immune QuickStart every day along with a high-quality fish oil supplement.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD