Grape Seed for Healthy Circulation – Invite Health Podcast, Episode 22
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey. Ph
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It’s hard to believe, but your body holds about 60,000 miles of blood vessels. These blood vessels along with your heart and some accessory muscles make up your circulatory system throughout your body. Having poor circulation is not a good thing! Many diseases do not become dangerous until they start messing with your circulatory system. If blood isn’t carried to every corner of your body and your circulation is poor, that means your body isn’t getting enough oxygen and nutrition.
Today, we are going to focus on grape seed and how this powerful extract has been proven clinically to improve and protect your circulatory system, especially your circulation and blood pressure.
What is Grape Seed Extract?
The ingredients in Grape Seed Extract are very powerful antioxidants. They are collectively known as OPCs (Oligomeric Proanthocyanidins), which are a class of tanins that are 20 times more powerful than Vitamin C and 50 times more powerful than Vitamin E. Now, these tannins do not replace Vitamin C or E as they have their own functions throughout the body but this does show you how strong Grape seed is. These OPCs can help protect you against pollutants like cigarette smoke, car exhaust and chemicals. They help the protect the body against pre-mature aging.
Grape seed has received GRAS certification (Generally Recognized As Safe) by the FDA – “General recognition of safety through scientific procedures is based upon the application of generally available and accepted scientific data, information, or methods, which ordinarily are published, as well as the application of scientific principles, and may be corroborated by the application of unpublished scientific data, information, or methods.”
“You would have to drink about 16 ounces of red grape juice to get the amount of OPCs in one capsule of the InVite Health Grape Seed 250mg.”
– Jerry Hickey, Ph.
How it Works in the Body
There is a gas that opens up your blood vessels called Nitric Oxide. The problem with nitric oxide is that it is extremely unstable and vulnerable to damage, so things like cigarette smoke or pollution from cars can make it unstable, which can affect your circulation.
What Grape seed does is increases the level of an antioxidant enzyme system in your blood vessel walls called superoxide dismutase, which in turn stabilizes the nitric oxide which then begins to open up your blood vessels for proper circulation. It also improves flow mediated dilation, which refers to widening of an artery when blood flow increases inside of it.
Notes From Jerry Hickey, Ph.
- Many individuals prevent cardiovascular disease by counteracting the destructive effects of high cholesterol on the heart and blood vessels
- Strengthen blood vessel walls and reduces capillary fragility, Strengthens capillaries, veins, and arteries, and the heart itself improving blood flow and decreasing vascular resistance
- OPCs improve blood vessel strength and function and aid circulation and are helpful in vascular disorders, including venous insufficiency
- Blunts salt sensitive hypertension
- Helps protect the circulatory system from cigarette smoke and helps prevent tobacco smoke from oxidizing LDL-cholesterol
- A study by cardiovascular researchers at UC Davis School of Medicine gave Grape Seed OPCs (150mg or 300mg a day) or placebo to people with metabolic syndrome who had high blood pressure. OPCs caused a drop in systolic pressure of 12 mm Hg on average and an 8 point average drop in diastolic pressure vs. placebo
The InVite® Health Pharmaceutical Grade, standardized Grape Seed extract supplies 95% OPCs – the richest source I have ever seen. You would have to drink about 16 ounces of red grape juice (with all of its sugar content; 15.5 mg OPC per ounce) to get the amount of OPCs in one capsule of the InVite Health Grape Seed 250mg (237.5mg minimum OPC). You would have to drink 13 oz. of Red Wine with all of thedamaging alcohol to get this much OPC.
