Eat Your Broccoli and pHruits and pHolage

Eat your broccoli! That's the advice from UCLA
researchers who have found that a chemical in
broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables may
hold a key to restoring the body's alkalinity and
thus immunity, which declines as we age.

Published in this week's online edition of the
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the
study findings show that sulforaphane, a chemical
in broccoli, switches on a set of antioxidant
genes in specific immune cells, which then buffer
the injurious effects of molecules known as
dietary or metabolic acid that can damage cells
and lead to dis-ease.

Dietary and metabolic acids are by-products of
normal body processes, such as the metabolic
conversion of food into energy, and can also
enter the body through small particles present
in polluted air. These molecules can cause
oxidative tissue damage, leading to dis-ease --
for example, triggering the inflammation or stage
4 acidosis that causes clogged arteries. Oxidative
or acid damage to body tissues and organs is thought
to be one of the major causes of aging.

"The mysteries of aging have always intrigued man,"
said Dr. Andre Nel, the study's principal investigator
and chief of nanomedicine at the David Geffen School
of Medicine at UCLA. "While we have known for some
time that free radicals (acids) are important in aging,
most of the past attention has focused on the
mechanisms that produce free radicals (acids) rather
than addressing the pathways used by the body to
suppress their production."

According to the UCLA study, the ability of aged
tissues to reinvigorate their antioxidant defense
can play an important role in reversing much of the
negative impact of dietary and/or metabolic acids
on the alkaline design of the body. However, until
this current study, the extent to which antioxidant
defense can impact the aging process in the immune
system was not properly understood.

The UCLA team not only found that the direct
administration of sulforaphane in broccoli reversed
the decline in cellular immune function in old mice,
but they witnessed similar results when they took
individual immune cells from old mice, treated those
cells with the chemical outside the body and then
placed the treated cells back into a recipient
animal.

"We found that treating older mice with sulforaphane
increased the immune response to the level of
younger mice," said Hyon-Jeen Kim, first author
and research scientist at the Geffen School.

To investigate how the chemical in broccoli increased
the immune system's response, the UCLA group confirmed
that sulforaphane interacts with a protein called Nrf2,
which serves as a master regulator of the body's
overall antioxidant response and is capable of
switching on hundreds of antioxidant and rejuvenating
body cells.

Kim said that although there is a decline in Nrf2
activity with aging, this pathway remains accessible
to chemicals like sulforaphane that are capable of
restoring some of the ravages of aging by boosting
antioxidant or alkaline buffering pathways.

"Dietary antioxidants have been shown to have important
effects on immune function, and with further study,
we may be adding broccoli and other cruciferous
vegetables to that list," Nel said.

Dr. Robert O. Young, a research scientist at the
pH Miracle Living Center, states, "brocolli is
a wonderful source of antioxidants, such as
sulforaphane to buffer the acids of lifestyle,
diet and metabolism."

Dr. Young is offering a concentration of sulforaphane
from brocolli sprouts in his new formula, pHruits and
pHolage. To learn more about Dr. Young's pHruits and
pHolage and its antioxidant and thus anti-aging
benefits go to:

http://www.phmiracleliving.com/phruits.htm