Getting old does not have to mean the degeneration of health.  Researchers have determined that humans can live happy and vital lives until at least 125.  And that's a very conservative estimate.  Further, it's not about quantity of life but its quality.  Focus on the "happy and vital" not just the length of life.  Then why do people suffer for so many years and die so young?  

  Many studies have already shown the answer-molecules foreign to your body called "free radicals." Environmental pollutants -- automobile and truck exhaust, second hand cigarette smoke, pesticides, herbicides, hundreds of thousands of industrial chemicals, margarines or other partially hydrogenated oils in our foods, chlorine in our water, household cleaners, paint and petrochemical fumes, ozone from copy machines, microwaves from cell phone transmissions, ultra-violet light from the sun--fill our world.  If you live on this planet, you're exposed to them. According to the original and subsequent research of Denham Harmon, MD, PhD, over the past fifty years, free radicals lack one or more paired electrons which makes them highly reactive.  To satisfy their electrical imbalance they steal electrons from molecules that make up the structure of cells.   With their structure disturbed, molecules of the cell fail to function correctly, changing their capacity to carry out the normal biochemical cell processes.  Out of balance, the living system malfunctions, ultimately presenting as a noticeable symptom or constellation of symptoms that the gives the physician an indication of what is wrong.  

If the attack is in the arteries, a do-it-yourself bandage that uses cholesterol and calcium heals the wound and you get "hardening of the arteries" and high blood pressure.  If it happens in the capillaries, they may begin to leak-causing easy bruising and loss of blood internally.  If it happens in the joints it's called arthritis.  In the pancreas it's called diabetes.  On neurons it's called Parkinson's or Multiple Sclerosis.  Free radical damage has been associated with many types of cancer.  Most chronic degenerative diseases have been linked to free radicals.  Now nearly fifty years later, the evidence is unequivocal. The "take home message" is that you can immediately put this half century of research to your benefit now.

Normally your body could overcome the free radicals with normal nutrition, but (1) the soils have become depleted of the necessary trace minerals plants need to create natural antidotes to the free radicals, (2) the harvesting and shipping of produce before it's ripe robs food of necessary nutrients, (3) the processing of food adds many chemicals that we don't really know enough about (until we've been eating foods with such chemicals long enough that the problems begin to show up), (4) cigarette-smoking, (5) exposure to electromagnetic radiation such as copy machines, computer monitors, cell phones and television sets, (6) exposure to free radicals in the air we breath and the water we drink.  I've seen hundreds of kids with cancer when my daughter was in the Children's Health Center in Minneapolis fighting for her life.  Something was very wrong with that picture.

 With only one to four hours of nutrition instruction in medical school, most medical doctors know less than a home economics teacher about nutrition.  Most of their training is prescribing drugs and surgery.  Drugs from the pharmaceutical giants almost always have many "side effects" that require the use of still more drugs that have other side effects.  A study in Boston showed that 28% of hospital admissions were the direct result of incorrectly prescribed drugs.  Bypass surgery is never expected to last more than a few years before another operation will become necessary.  Arteries opened with angioplasty are closed soon after the procedure.

 What then are you to do?  Naturally you can choose to learn about the many factors that cause free radical damage and we should find ways to either grow our own foods or find reputable organic sources.  You can take steps to ensure safe, healthy food, air and water. Many plants are powerful healers with volumes of scientific documentation to support their use in maintaining health.  Knowledge and direct experience are excellent teachers.  There are many things you can do for yourself, your family and friends. I'd like to introduce you to some of the things you can choose to do to protect against free radicals--avoid free-radical exposure, eat high nutrient foods and use the super-antioxidant, MaraPine Pycnogenol.  It's your life.

A majority of physicians themselves take antioxidant supplements.  Why?  Because they work.  Does your Physician recommend them to you?  If not, it's because they aren't into prevention, its about money. They want more money from you, office visits, blood test, x-rays, more test, and especially to monitor the drugs they put you on.  Demand that your Physician research with you treatment methods other than drugs. If no such luck, find a Physician that will. You have nothing to lose, except the terrible side effects.

Dr. Leonard Mendelssohn, M.D.

"The average life expectancy of many species has been increased by more than 20 by adding antioxidants to the diet...This increase is equivalent to raising the human life span from the present 74.8 years to 97.2 years." 
Dr. Denham Harman, M.D., Ph.D.