Hey everybody, this is Mike Uhrlaub coming at you again from the Flex Compound with another episode of Power Your Life. Today I am going to tell you about an amazing nutrient called Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). First I want to share what happened this weekend. This weekend I taught my son, Garrett, how to clean his shotgun. He’s been competing every weekend in trap shooting meats. For the most part, I had been cleaning his gun for him and we thought it was time he learned how to clean his gun himself. After having served three years in a US Army Cavalry Squadron, I understand the importance of keeping a gun in clean, good working order.
No one wants to have their weapon jam at a critical time in competition because you didn’t clean it or maintain it properly. As I was going through the steps of breaking the gun down, cleaning it, and instructing him on the process, I really got to thinking. Cleaning my son’s shotgun is a lot like the importance of taking care of ourselves.
Too often in our lives, we neglect taking care of ourselves. We neglect it physically, mentally, and spiritually. Pushing ourselves so hard at work and home while not eating right, not getting enough sleep, or not taking the time to relax and decompress. What happens next is we start to get sick and our bodies start to break down. We start to get stressed and overwhelmed very easily. Now we can’t even think clearly or even focused. This starts to have a negative effect on our performance and relationships with those that we love.
Guess What?
Most of this could be avoided by a little preventative care and maintenance. By just slowing down, getting yourself to bed on time, eating right, and taking the time to find balance in your life. It’s when our lives start to get out of balance that all kinds of problems begin to arise. Just like my son is going to have to take the time to clean and oil his shotgun on a regular basis to keep it in good working order… We have to take the time to care for ourselves too.
When was the last time you made sure you were getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night? Or when were you eating a healthy diet? Exercising on a regular basis? Or even just taking the time to meditate and pray? Creating a routine for yourself that focuses on your own self-care is critical, not just to your physical health, but to your mental, emotional, and spiritual health too. Take the time this week for your self-care: Relax and Refocus. A little preventative maintenance for your body, mind, and soul will pay off dividends in the future.
A really good way to give yourself a little preventative maintenance is to make sure you’re getting the right nutrients in your diet. One of the key nutrients is Methylsulfonylmethane. Say that really fast! It’s also known as MSM.
Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM)
Is one of the key ingredients in the joint neutral joint supplement called Joint Nutra Care. MSM is an amazing nutrient as you will soon see. In fact, there was an article written about MSM from the Medical Information Foundation and this article was just eye opening as to how incredible this nutrient and important it really is.
What is MSM?
It is an organic form of sulfur. I’m going to kind of get a little scientific/geek here on you guys… I really enjoy doing this and hope I don’t lose you. I believe it is important for you to know some of the what’s going on behind these nutrients, where they come from, and what they do. MSM is a natural form of sulfur and made from what is known as the earth sulfur cycle. Let me explain the sulfur cycle a little bit to you, because like I said, it’s really important for you to understand how all of this works together. Plus, it’s really quite amazing.
First of all, algae and plankton in the ocean absorb large amounts of inorganic sulfur from the seawater. They then convert it into a simple organic form of sulfur. When these algae and plankton die, the sulfur in their system is released into the water. After being released, it vaporizes into the stratosphere. It collects in the stratosphere and the ultraviolet light further converts the sulfur into the form of MSM.
Once converted, the MSM, which is highly soluble in water, concentrates in the atmospheric water vapor, and it returns to earth as rain. So then, the MSM and rain waters the plants. Get it? See the cycle?
Soil absorbs the MSM which in turn passes it to fruits and vegetables. After this process humans consume the fruits and vegetables rich in MSM.
Problem?
This is where we run into all kinds of problems because MSM is lost in the vegetables and fruit when they are frozen, heated, or microwaved. The only way you can really get it is if you are eating raw fruits and vegetables. If you’re getting them any prepared way, it’s going to minimize the MSM in that fruit or vegetable.
Think about this… Most of the commercially sold fruits and vegetables are low in MSM because of the way they’re treated and packaged. The results from this is most of us in industrialized countries suffer from low MSM levels in our bodies.
What does this mean for you? Why should you even care?
That’s an excellent question my friends, because low MSM levels in our bodies have been linked to fatigue, depression, high sensitivity to physical/psychological stress, and many degenerative diseases.
MSM is a form of sulfur. Why is it so important for your health?
The first thing you need to know is sulfur helps create bonds; They hold things together, such as amino acids and proteins, to help them form in the body.
Sulfur is key in forming connective tissues, such as keratin which is in your hair and nails. Sulfur is also important in forming connected tissue in the form of cartilage. Collagen is the most plentiful protein in the body and is dependent on sulfur. Collagen is also one of the building blocks for cartilage and gives it their structure and flexibility. Without adequate sulfur, these connective tissues cannot function normally.
It goes even deeper than that! Connective tissue also helps hold all the cells together and transport nutrients, electrolytes, and other key substances within the body. The connective tissue forms this essential communication network in your body. As we age, many of us start to lose our flexibility; The elastic properties of many of our natural tissues, muscle joints, skin, lung tissues, and even blood vessels become less flexible like when we were younger.
This results in early disease and degeneration of the body. I really hope I’m not losing you guys here. I can say I’m doing a little bit of kind of geek-ing out on the science side of it. But you know, I’m a physical therapist. This is what we do. We live for this stuff. I don’t want to get too technical, but sulfur is so important to your body. I really want to be able to show you why this is. If you understand the importance, it makes it so much easier to understand why you need it and what it’s going to do for your body.
Sulfur
Sulfur also affects how easily things can pass in and out of the cells of your body. This happens by sulfur bridges that form these flexible connections between the cells of their body and the surrounding connective tissue. These sulfur bridges help keep the cells elastic and flexible. Like we mentioned, low sulfur in the body will lead to degeneration. What happens is the cell wall will start to harden and become more rigid. This prevents nutrients and waste products from moving in and out of the cell effectively like they need to. The cells don’t get what they need to stay healthy and results in a buildup of toxic waste products within the cell leading to early degeneration of the tissue.
It gets more interesting when we look at it because these sulfur bridges also affect the function of enzymes in your body. Now, enzymes are proteins that control many of your key life functions. Things like energy production for one. Sulfur affects the mitochondria of the cell. Mitochondria is this little energy factory inside your cell. It’s what makes the cell energized. This is what gives you energy and allows the cell to do what it’s supposed to. Sulfur is required for your body to be able to use glucose for energy, because these sulfur bridges are important for insulin to function normally in the body. As you can see, sulfur is so critical to your health in so many ways.
But Why?
Now we know what sulfur does for your body, but why is MSM important? Right? That is because MSM is your body’s preferred source of sulfur. MSM is the easiest digested form of sulfur. Our bodies have been engineered to take it in and use it extremely effectively. It is currently thought that we’re actually pre-programmed. The human body is genetically pre-programmed to use MSM as its primary source of sulfur.
So now let’s go in and talk about the benefits of MSM to you. And those benefits are drum roll please……………… Here they come. Oh man, shoot, we are out of time. So, we’ll cover that next time.
Next week, I’m going to go in depth on all of the benefits MSM has for your body and what all of it means to you and your health.
By the way, I almost forgot to tell you about our new back pain breakthrough session. In this session, you can find out what the root cause of your problem is. You can get treatment and can feel better immediately. What you have to do is really easy.
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As always, I’m going to leave you with this thought-provoking quote from Corrie Ten Boom. “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows. It empties today of its strength.” I’m going to let that one soak in on you for a while.
Until next time. Power Your Life and keep moving forward.
