Nutrients That Make Your Body Work #2

The second important nutrient for your body to hum along in good shape is protein. Proteins are the primary building blocks of the blood, skin, hair, nails, organs, and muscles. We require 22 different amino acids, eight of which our bodies cannot produce and we must ingest these in order to have them available in our systems.

Proteins are essential for growth, body building and tissue repair. We also use proteins for fuel when carbs and fat supplies are inadequate. Proteins are what help us maintain and repair muscles and bones.

Benefits to Bouncing

Some of the benefits to bouncing are balance and coordination. If you tend to be a little wobbly, this is a good way for you to begin to get back into balance by increasing coordination. Another benefit is that you will begin to develop rhythm.

From a physiological state, you will improve cardiovascular fitness, bone density, lymphatic circulation, organ function and bladder control. Lastly, you will also expend calories, which is definitely not a bad thing!

The stimulation of the lymphatic circulation is a key piece, because the lymph system is how your body gets rid of toxins in the body. By stimulating it, you help your body to get rid of the toxins more quickly.

Soy

You may not have grown up eating soy, but there are lots of products in the stores these days made from soy. And as usual there is controversy over whether soy is good or bad. So today I will go over some of the positive things about soy and tomorrow I will hit some of the bad things about soy.

Probably the best thing about soy is that it is an excellent low fat protein source. But this is just one of it's features. Soy also contains minerals like iron, zinc and calcium. The true health benefit of soy is in the isoflavons it contains. Isoflavons are similar in chemical structure to our own estrogen.

Isoflavons help women combat the symptoms of memopause, as well as improve bone health, decrease heart disease risk, reduce cancer risk, and protect against prostate problems.

More About Lysine

There are more good things about lysine. Researchers have found that lysine not only improves the absorption of calcium in the GI tract, but it also decreases the loss of calcium in the kidney. This is turn may be helpful to improving bone and decreasing osteoporosis.

Researchers have also shown that when lysine combines with arginine, bone building activity increases and collagen is enhanced. So lysine has a 2 fold effect on bones helping to prevent osteoporosis.

Soy Continued

Soy is sometimes called a "super food" because cultures with high soy content in their diets tend to be healthier. Reviewing the literature on this, there is little effect on bone health, cancer, and kidney disease. While cultures that have high intake of soy based foods have less reproductive cancers, they have much higher incidents of thyroid and digestive cancers.

The Swiss did a study on 1992 which estimated that 100 grams of soy is equivalent to the estrogenic equivalent of the birth control pill. So while this may protect the reproductive track, it may increase cancer formation in the thyroid and digestive tract. Another thought here, if you have an infant who is allergic to milk and you put them on soy based formula what is the estrogenic effect on them?? I don't know, but I would certainly want to look at alternatives.