An Adaptogen for Your Skin – Inner Wellness & Relaxation

Adaptogen is a term for nature’s gifts that have the ability to produce suitable adjustments in our body, at the cellular level, and work by helping us to protect the body from various kinds of stress and by stimulating it’s own self-regeneration process. These agents support the body’s immune system and thus regulate body processes and help us move towards true health and to stay there.

An adaptogen is a natural remedy that helps bolster our innate resistance to disease and helps to prevent stress from taking a devastating toll on our nervous, hormonal and immune systems and increases the energy levels of the body. Adaptogens tend to normalize body functions, and when the job is completed, they are eliminated or incorporated into the body without side effects and do not harm the body unlike allopathic drugs.

Today, thanks to modern technology, we are able to change the natural environment virtually at will. Air conditioning, indoor lighting, central heating, pesticides, preservatives, petroleum, cars, airplanes, polyester and plastics are just a few of the countless amenities we use to adapt the environment to our own needs. Yet however convenient or life-supporting these things may seem in the short-term, they are a two-edged sword, bringing us undesirable side effects in the long term.

Some of the most obvious of these are already becoming apparent: smog, the thinning ozone layer, the greenhouse effect and the many heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals that are finding their way into our bloodstream for the first time in the history of our body’s delicate biochemistry.

These by products of “The good life” are now creating a major problem for the adaptation and survival of most species and biosystems on planet earth. And to compound the problem, this occurs at the very moment when we need more than ever to adapt to a quickly changing and stressful environment.

As a society we seem set on debilitating our body’s natural ability to adapt by constantly forcing the environment to meet our whimsy whims and “needs” instead of vice versa. In Darwinian terms, this does not bode well for our species.

Rene Dubois , a humanist scientist said “This state of adaptedness gives a false sense of security because it does not have a lasting value and does not prepare for the future.”

Therefore, it seems that the best course for survival is to increase our adaptability to our environment, not the other way around. In other words, instead of leaning on pharmaceuticals or isolates from natural sources to improve our well being or to fight acne bacteria with chemicals it may be best to strengthen our body, our immune system, ourselves.

And cultivate a better rapport with nature’s gifts instead of just exploiting whatever we cleverly isolate from nature in the laboratory, and this is where adaptogens can be of great importance.

Fortunately for us there is a class of biological remedies available that can help the body adapt better to its environment, whether that environment be one of many harmful chemical or simply one of rapid change. These nature’s gifts are called adaptogens.

Research on adaptogens shows that this unique class of natural medicines can improve the adaptive response in people suffering from stress as well as to minimize the systemic effects of chronic stress.

In the treatment of skin ailing, adaptogenic ingredients can serve to increase the body’s nonspecific responses to stress, thereby providing an extra edge in a battle against a condition with many causes and symptoms.

Research on Adaptogens

The world-renowned Russian research scientist, Dr. Israel I. Brekhman PhD, is hailed world-wide as the father of extensive Adaptogen research. He was a professor of medicine, and a physiological pharmacologist.

The Soviet Union and The Russian National Parliament bestowed on the good doctor the Order of Lenin, The Lenin Medal for valiant work, as well as the coveted Certificate of Honor, these awards came to him for breaking the genetic codes of plants, uncovering the molecular structures of their phyto-chemicals and his lifetime work with Adaptogens.

He also held 40 patents, published 22 monographs, several hundred scientific articles, and wrote many books. Dr. Brekhman pioneered a vast .top-secret. scientific effort funded by the Russian government involving 1200 of their best scientists. Directed by Dr. Brekhman this scientific community applied scientific methodology to the study of plants. They explored plant biological codes and analyzed their molecular structures.

Entire populations of towns, schools, hospitals and factories became his test subjects. In one case study, for example they analyzed an entire town and all its inhabitants including the animals for twelve long years. This lead to one of the most massive, sustained and successful programs of human and animal testing in recorded scientific history.

It has been proven that the chemical hormonal assault on the body from stress lowers the immune system responses. The effects from stress upon the immune system are dramatic, immediate and well documented.

Stress triggers such as toxins, pollutants, oxidants, and chemicals in processed foods, radiation, depression and fatigue are now thought to be the cause of DNA mutations that produce cancer.

Adaptogens are the missing nutrients from nature that protect us from the chemical hormonal assault of such stressors. Studies have reported that the frequency of cancer is 3.3 times lower in animals taking the Adaptogens than in the control group of animals not given Adaptogens.

But the paramount question for each of us concerned about health is whether we can find a way to reduce, undo and buffer these damaging chemical effects of stress. That is precisely what Adaptogens are all about.

The soviet scientific community tested these particular plant extracts, on large groups of people under physical and mental stress. Russian cosmonauts, top athletes, aircraft pilots, military personnel, truck drivers, factory workers, were all given Adaptogens. They found dramatic improvements in performance, fewer errors, less illness, less accidents and calmer functioning.