Title: Healthy Cells, Healthy Life

Title: Healthy Cells, Healthy Life

Subtitle: BalancingRedoxfor Better Health

Author: Dr Robertson D. Ward, M.D., FAAFP

Spine: Healthy Cells, Healthy Life

Imprint Page

Title: Healthy Cells, Healthy Life: Balancing Redox for Better Health

Website:

Email:

Copyright: 2017-07-31

First Published by Robertson Ward in September 2017.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored, posted on the Internet, or transmitted in any form, or by any means whether electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording, or any other means, without written permission from the author and publisher of the book.

ISBN: 978-0-6481440-0-7

Dedication page

This book is dedicated to all those who have been instrumental in assisting and inspiring me to learn and share what I know to be true about health and healing.

To my wife, Diane, thank you for your boundless love and encouragement. Your faith and kindness have empowered me.

To my entire family, thank you for your willingness to ask questions and listen to explanations of principles that I continue to learn. Your influence anchors constant progression in my passion for functional medicine.

To my patients, thank you for your willingness to openly help me understand the nature of your challenges at a core level. You have shown me countless times how important it is to listen, and then think about causes and solutions. Thank you for teaching me new ideas and concepts that have, at times, made all the difference.

To my colleagues, thank you for challenging me to test and retest ideas. Thank you for collaborating with patients in which we share a deep desire to help. Thank you for the countless emails and questions which have served to instruct me about the new horizons of physiology and science which include Redox biochemistry.

We, who have a love for the journey of health and healing, I believe, are the most important pioneers for the 21st century. As we learn about the interface of our micro-biome with the cellular transcriptome, we are coming to understand the nature of 20th centuries degenerative diseases as merely a failure to adapt to the advancing threats of lifestyle trends, food supplies and environmental pollution. Armed with this new awareness, we can now choose the path that we want for ourselves.

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Table of CONTENTS

About the author

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: THE IMPORTANCE OF Redox

What are cells?

What are Redox molecules?

Maintaining balance

The impacts of imbalance

The case for redox supplementation

The role of lifestyle and redox in gene expression

How does this work?

Chapter 3: Redox and the body’s systems

Cardiovascular system

Digestive system

Endocrine system

Immune system

Integumentary (skin) system

Musculoskeletal system

Nervous system

Respiratory system

Chapter 4: The Redox basis of illness

21st century illnesses

Acne

Addiction

Adrenal insufficiency

Allergies/allergy epidemic

Anxiety

Arthritis (osteoarthritis)

Asthma

Autism

Autoimmune diseases

Cancer

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Coronary artery disease (heart disease)

Dementia

Depression

Diabetes

Digestive illness and gut microbiom

Fibromyalgia

Flu viruses

Gerd (reflux)

Gout

High cholesterol

Hormonal imbalance

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Inflammation

Macular degeneration

Migraine

Obesity

Osteoporosis

Prostate health

Psoriasis

Rheumatoid arthritis

Sleep disorders

Thyroid problems

Traumatic brain injury

Vitamin D deficiency

Wound healing

CHapter 5: Enhancing wellbeing

Why is this so profound?

How to support a healthy lifestyle

Bibliography

Glossary

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About the author

Dr Robertson Ward is an acclaimed Community Medicine physician and researcher with a medical degree from the University of Illinois. Board certified in Family Medicine, he has served in top positions as a family practitioner in community health organizations and hospitals all over the Midwestern United States. He has directed more than 15 full clinical research studies on various topics and has a broad range of experience in clinical medicine.

Dr Ward has apassionate interest in helping people find real solutions to their health problems. While attending medical school, a close friend of Dr Ward’s died from cancer. It affected him profoundly and set him on a path of contemplating his own health, what he could do to proactively improve it and ultimately fulfill the things he wanted to achieve in life.

What Dr Ward has learned on his own personal quest, he has been able to share with patients, stepping beyond simply treating symptoms to working with people to look deeper into the cause behind the symptom, and helping people rebuild their health.

In 2010, a friend gave Dr Ward a book on Redox biochemistry: an emerging field of health science that had not come across his radar in clinical practice. As he read more about it, he began to see how this new science was critically important to helping people maintain their cellular health.

He began supplementing his own body with Redox signalingmolecules and noticed an improvement in his health. He then began introducing some of his patients to the science, and shared the molecules with them, seeing changes and improvements he didn’t think possible. In his own words, Dr Ward said, “My medical paradigm had to shift.”

Dr Ward has now become an acknowledged expert in the field of Redox biochemistry as it applies to medicine. He has established a website — theredoxdoc.com — where he shares information about how Redox biochemistry interfaces with different illnesses and diseases, and how improvement can be attained through Redox supplementation.

Dr Ward applies the science of Redox biochemistry in his own functional medicine clinic, and consistently finds positive and tangible physical transformations in his patients.

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CONTENT PAGES

Chapter 1: Introduction

PULL-QUOTE –

“Our body is an amazing self-healing mechanism – give it the right resources and it will take care of itself.”

This book aims to help you gain an understanding of how aging and illness occur, and empower you to investigate possibilities for improving your health and perhaps the health of others around you.

The following chapters explain the essence of Redox biochemistry: a health science that examines the influence our cellular and molecular health has on our overall health.

This emerging field is giving us a greater understanding of how the impacts of day-to-day life can destabilize the body’s innate ability to maintain homeostasis (a balanced or stable state), and how Redoxsignalingmolecules may provide the answer to slowing the aging process and reversing illness.

In this book you will find an explanation of the key body systems, the role they play in our survival and how Redox biochemistry affects how they function. There is also an extensive section on many common diseases and illnesses that can give you an understanding, from a clinical perspective, of how and why these occur, and how Redox support can assist in their treatment and/or management.

Redox biochemistry is foundational to cellular health, and therefore our body’s health. By understanding how it intersects with our body’s various systems, we can gain valuable insights into our own state of health, and use that information to consider new ideas and make different decisions around how we take care of ourselves.

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CONTENT PAGES

Chapter 2: THE IMPORTANCE OF Redox

PULL QUOTE

“All of our health problems are due to cells that are unable to maintain a healthy Redox potential.”

The body is an amazing thing. It’s made up of 40 trillion cells, each of them performing millions of processes (sometimes millions per second) to keep us alive and fully functioning.

When everything is balance and working well, we’re healthy. However, when that delicate balance is tipped we start to have problems that lead to illness, disease and even death.

What are cells?

Cells are quite literally the building blocks of the body. They combine together to form tissues, muscles, bones and all the other structural elements that make up the body.

Theyconsist of proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and other compounds that are essential for life. These compounds are all types of molecules, which are made up of smaller particles called atoms, which themselves are made up of protons, electrons and neutrons.

DIAGRAM – HUMAN CELL STRUCTURE

How cells work

Our cell anatomy is complex, but if you compare it to the body’s anatomy you see that it functions in a similar way.

Cell membrane: maintains fluid and mineral balance in the cell and establishes compartments. It is equivalent to the kidneys.

Nucleus: located inside the cell, it directs cellular actions and protects the genetic material in the DNA. It is equivalent to the brain.

Endoplasmic reticulum: detoxifies the cell and other metabolic functions. This is roughly what the liver does.

Mitochondria: the powerhouse of the cell, it runs the cellular respiration process. This makes it similar to the lungs.

Lysosomes: break down nutrients. They function similarly to the stomach.

Vacuoles: prepare waste for excretion. They work the way the colon works.

Golgi apparatus: distributes cellular by-products around the cell. This is equivalent to how blood vessels work in the body.

Cells are the source of the body’s energy supply. At their most basic level, they convert food into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) — the energy that powers the body — and in the process of doing this, Redoxsignalingmolecules are created.

What are Redoxmolecules?

In the same way that cells are the building blocks of the body, Redoxsignalingmolecules are the building blocks of our cells. They are the smallest common denominator for our health — even affecting the expression of our DNA.

Redox signalingmolecules are combinations of four types of atoms — hydrogen, oxygen, chloride and nitrogen — and are very tiny, consisting of only two to four atoms each. They are able to travel to all parts of the body, even crossing the blood-brain barrier.

The term Redox refers to reduction and oxidation: two opposite chemical reactions that occur when electrons are passed from one atom to another. There are literally millions of these chemical reactions happening every second in our bodies:they are what keep us alive.

Redox signalingmolecules are responsible for regulating all these chemical reactions.

Maintaining balance

For our body to function well and maintain good health it needs to be in homeostasis. Homeostasis basically meansthat all interdependent elements are in balance, providing a stable state in the body.

The body has set points it uses to monitor homeostasis: things like body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, etc. These are constantly being altered by influences in our daily lives: a change in the weather, the food we just ate, contact with someone who has a cold, and any number of other factors that trigger reactions that send these levels up and down.

Redoxsignalingmolecules detect these changes and signal the Redox process, telling cells to reduce or oxidize to counter the changes and thereby keep the body in balance.

It is this cellular communication that we refer to as Redox signaling, and it is vital to our health. Through this process, Redox signalingmolecules detect cellular problems, weakness and dysfunction in the body. They also instigate responses to repair the issues as they are occurring.

If this signaling system breaks down it can lead to oxidative stress or excess inflammation in the body, both of which contribute to aging, illness, disease and eventually death.

The impacts of imbalance

Our health depends on every system of the body maintaining Redox balance. Factors such as aging, poor diet, mental stress, inadequate hydration and a sedentary lifestyle can all throw the natural system out of balance.

The short-term result of insufficient Redox signalingmolecules can be cellular death from causes such as infection. The long-term impacts may include accelerated aging and susceptibility to disease.

All illness expressed in the body is either oxidative or inflammatory.

SCALES DIAGRAM FROM HOME PAGE

Oxidative stress and its effects

A balanced cell has even numbers of electrons that function in pairs. Through normal Redox processes, a molecule temporarily loses or gains an electron, turning it into a free radical (the name given to atoms or molecules with unpaired electrons).

Free radicals are everywhere: in our bodies, and in the air and environment around us. They’re a normal by-product of the body’s Redox functions and in these normal occurrences are not dangerous.

However, when the body is exposed to excess numbers of free radicals it triggers problems. Cigarette smoke, fried foods, overexposure to the sun, pollution, prescription drugs and toxic chemicals, to name a few, all create free radicals. The more we are exposed to those things, the greater the number of free radicals our body has to try to deal with and too much exposure overwhelms the body’s native protective processes.

As the cells in our body are always seeking to be in balance, these unbalanced molecules (free radicals)start scavenging for a partner for their unpaired electron. They don’t mind where they get that electron from and will steal it from a perfectly balanced cell, causing that cell to then become unbalanced. This means that cell now needs to find a match for its unpaired electron, and on and on it goes: setting off a chain reaction that can result in oxidative stress and damage.

This is where anti-oxidants are vital. Unlike other molecules, anti-oxidants are actually able to neutralize free radicals by capturing the unpaired electronand uniting it with an available negatively charged redox molecule, thus neutralizing it into a harmless by-product.

If there are enough anti-oxidants and available redox molecules to provide electrons for the unbalanced radicals, the body stays in homeostasis. However, if there are more oxidants than antioxidants this leads to oxidative stress, which is the cause of many illnesses and diseases. Some of these include:

• heart disease
• osteoarthritis
• stroke
• Alzheimer’s
• diabetes type 2
• hypertension
• macular degeneration
• obesity.

Inflammation and its effects

Inflammation is part of the body’s normal Redox processes. An inflammatory response is the initial part of healing and occurs when specific white blood cells are sent to an area that is damaged or dysfunctional to bring it back into balance.

An example of this is when you cut yourself. You will notice the area around the cut turning red as the healing cells swarm on the area (releasing redox molecules) to deal with any bacteria and ward off infection. They then begin repairing and regenerating skin cells.

As the situation is contained, the normal Redox process holds back on sending any further cells to the area, re-assigns the response cells to other duties, and coordinates the final clean up.

However, if there is a disruption to the availability of Redox signalingmolecules, and messaging is therefore not happening properly, that de-escalation doesn’t happen and inflammation continues to build.

Excess inflammation in the body is the cause of a number of health problems and illnesses. Some of these include:

• asthma
• allergies
• thyroid issues
• cancer
• skin problems
• autoimmune diseases
• sex hormone imbalances
• ulcerative colitis.

The case for redox supplementation

As we age, the number of mitochondria in our body begin to decline, which has the effect of also reducing the number of Redoxsignalingmolecules that are produced. In fact, we lose roughly 10 per cent of our Redox molecule production capacity every decadeafter the age of 20, which is a significant problem for our bodies.

FewerRedoxsignalingmolecules means reduced efficiency as there simply aren’t enoughmolecules to keep doing all the work.

It is a bit like a company that ‘restructures’ and lays off a large number of its staff. There is still the same amount of work to do, but fewer people to do it. This means the remaining staff end up with a heavier workload, putting them under enormous stress. Soon some jobs simply aren’t getting done and the company has a decision to make: cut back on what it does, or bring in extra help to pick up the slack.

In the case of the body, the jobs that simply aren’t getting done translate to a breakdown in function and overall health. The result is accelerated aging, illness and disease. Until recently, the body didn’t have the option to bring in extra help. However, Redoxsignalingmolecules can now be taken as a supplement, both orally and topically, giving the body an added boost and helping it pick up some of the tasks it had been unable to get to. This in turn can greatly assist in slowing aging and restoring health where it may have been failing.