Silicon has remarkable health benefits. It’s widely recognized as an essential ingredient for healthy bones (required in any effective bone health supplement), and it has additional health and beauty benefits that will surprise you.
Skin Health
Research studies have proven that dietary silicon supplements can help smooth sun-damaged skin, decrease wrinkles, and improve resilience of skin. Silicon has also helped some people with acne.
Hair Health
Dietary silicon supplements have been shown to increase hair strength and thickness, and contribute to shinier hair.
Nail Health
Dietary silicon supplements help improve nail strength and decrease nail brittleness. They also keep the nail bed soft and supple.
What your hair, skin and nails all have in common is collagen, and the key ingredient that stimulates the production of collagen is silicon. Silicon increases collagen proteins and improves the strength of collagen protein in tissue. Silicon keeps collagen tissue healthy and supple. And it is the reason that hair, skin, and nail health are often bundled together in one supplement.
Heart Health
Silicon also helps blood vessels stay healthy because arteries have elastic type collagen that needs even more resilience than skin. Silicon content in arteries decreases with age, and arteries begin to clog with fatty plaques that may cause heart attacks. Stiffening of the arteries contributes to high blood pressure.
Silicon is removed from whole grains during refining, and it is removed from hard water during the water softening process. This refining and processing doesn’t happen in underdeveloped regions of the world where higher silicon intake has been suggested as a reason that heart disease is less common.
Brain Health
Another important benefit of silicon is that it decreases the amount of aluminum. Certain types of silicon can interfere with aluminum in the gut and keep aluminum from getting into the blood stream. This is important because high aluminum content in brain tissue is associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Research in mice has shown that excessive aluminum has toxic effects on brain cells, but dietary silicon decreases the toxic effects of aluminum and protects brain cells.
The benefits of silicon for brain health are not as clearly understood as the benefits for bone, skin, hair, nails and arteries. However, research continues to show that the special properties of silicon may be very important to humans for a variety of health benefits.
It is somewhat surprising that scientists are only beginning to understand this remarkable element, but the Institute for Better Bone Health is helping promote silicon for bone health because it has been overlooked too long as an essential nutrient for bone health.
Source: www.bonehealthnow.com
