Antioxidants Make Arteries More Elastic, Study Shows

A study published in Nutrition and Metabolism shows that supplementing with antioxidants can increase the elasticity of arteries and improve cardiovascular health.

The study in question took a group of 70 individuals with hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors and followed them over the course of six months while giving one group an antioxidant supplement.  The supplement in question had Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Co-Q10, and selenium in it.

After checking both the antioxidant and control group at three and six months’ worth of supplementation, the researchers found that the supplement group had an improvement in the elasticity of their arteries, and also showed improvement in other cardiovascular risk factors like blood pressure.

Vitamin C, E, and selenium are three of the “basic” antioxidants found in a lot of multivitamins.  If you’ve read my free report on choosing nutritional supplements, you know that antioxidants essentially protect the body from rusting from the inside out (see that report for a more in-depth discussion of how antioxidants work).

Co-Q10 is another excellent antioxidant which acts in the mitochondria, which is the part of the cell which creates energy.  It’s kind of like a little mini generator in each cell of the body, which needs Co-Q10 to protect it and make it work.  You can learn more about Co-Q10 in my video post here.

So why should we care about elastic arteries and lowered blood pressure?  I knew you’d ask that.

Elastic Arteries

Your arteries are not just dead tubes sitting there like a glorified garden hose, carrying blood along passively.  Quite the opposite.  Arteries are highly active, responsive structures that adapt and change to accomodate a wide range of blood flow need.

Here’s what I mean by that.  Different parts of your body need different amounts of blood delivered to it.  Each little bit is different.  And, not only that, but the individual needs of each little bit changes constantly.  If you start to pedal a bike, the muscles in your leg suddenly need a lot more blood flow than before you started pedalling.  But, other parts of you- say, your intestines- don’t have any new need for blood flow.

So, your arteries in different areas need to let more blood through, or less, depending on the situation.  They do this by getting tighter or looser, basically.  There’s a circular smooth muscle wall surrounding the outside of the artery which contracts to reduce the size of the lumen (that just means the hole in the middle) or relaxes to open it up, thereby letting more or less blood through.

As you can imagine, if the artery gets stiff and inelastic, it’s going to have trouble contracting and relaxing… in other words, the artery is going to have trouble adapting to the specific needs of whatever body part it’s feeding.  It’s kind of like having a bouncer at the door of a nightclub who isn’t really paying attention to what he’s doing.  Sometimes he lets it too many people, sometimes too few… it turns into a mess.

Pliable, elastic arteries can more easily adapt as they need to the ever-changing demands of what they are supplying… and that includes the heart.  Don’t forget, the heart needs blood too, so if the arteries that give the heart the blood that it needs to keep beating can’t keep up with demand…

…you get a heart attack.

Blood Pressure

So elastic arteries are a good thing.  Plus, don’t forget that those arteries have to endure constant pulses of pressure.  As the heart squeezes, it shoots the blood out under pressure- hence the term “blood pressure”.  Between squeezes, the pressure drops, and then surges again at the next squeeze.

The point is, there’s ups and down in the pressure shooting through the artery.  If that artery is stiff and inelastic, it won’t be able to subtley stretch and accomodate those pressure changes.  Think of old, dry leather that gets bent or flexed.  It starts to crack.  The same thing can happen to your arteries.

And, when a crack starts to form on the inside of your arteries, your body will use a cholesterol plug to sort of spackle it up like a hole in drywall.  This is how arteries start to get clogged… another road leading to heart attacks.

So, since antioxidants like those mentioned in this study help to keep arteries elastic and responsive, they can adapt to changes in pressure AND the changes in tightness or looseness required by the everyday life of an artery.  That means more efficient blood supply and a far lower likelihood of keeling over dead from a heart attack.  These are all good things in my book.

Again, you can learn more about antioxidants and how they work in my free report on how to pick out quality supplements- it’s on the upper right hand side of the page.  Plug in your email and I’ll send it to you for free.  That’s how nice I am.

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Stay Healthy!