Tuesday, January 27, 2009

What are Antioxidants and Free Radicals?

For so long now we've been bombarded everywhere we go with the words, " contains highest level of antioxidants" or "contains antioxidants to fight free radicals". Well, even if you don't know what an antioxidant or free radical is, you can quickly figure out that:
1- You don't want a free radical
2- You want as many antioxidants as you can get your hands on.

The health and food industry understand this. They understand marketing and how to approach the average consumer so that they'll search everywhere to find this magical molecule, in either a supplement or food source...THAT THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT! On the same token, the idea of having "free radicals" floating around in your body is enough to make one cringe, thus the quest for antioxidants to remove them!

Let's Start with the FREE RADICAL- This molecule is also called an "oxidant" and is chemically unstable because they are missing an electron. This also means that they are unbalanced, and our bodies do not welcome anything unbalanced. These unbalanced molecules are pretty much "damaged goods" as far as our bodies are concerned. So, to compensate for this instability, the free radical seeks out an electron elsewhere in our body, robbing it from wherever it can find it.
Some of the most common places they search and gain an electron is:

1 blood vessel walls
3 Joint Cells
4 Skin
Now, when an electron is taken from one of these cells in the body, that cell becomes damaged, thus increasing the effects of aging and disease from the specific cell the electron was robbed from.

How does an Antioxidant help this process?
Simply put, an antioxidant is a molecule which willingly gives up an extra electron in order to satisfy the "electron hungry" free radical. It neutralizes the free radical so that it is no longer "unstable".
In other words, if the free radical can get it's electron from an antioxidant, it won't bother the cells in your body for one.

There are many antioxidants; vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin D3, as well as many others, all aiding in the neutralizing of free radicals, which one can ingest.

Now there are only 4 Endogenous ( internally produced) Antioxidants:
1 Glutathione
2 Superoxide dismutase
3 Catalase
4 Coenzyme Q 10 ( CoQ10)

Glutathione is the KING of all endogenous antioxidants

It is found in every cell of our bodies, but highest concentrations are found in the skin. Other organs of high concentration are the liver ( detoxifying) and spleen( immune defense system)

I'm sure you're starting to see the importance of this, the most powerful antioxidant of all.......Glutathione.

1 comment:

  1. Diane,
    Great blog, very timely, while its hard for most people to know the importance of antioxidants its great for people like you to remind us to pay attention to the foods we eat. I always wonder about the health of people who can not afford to buy healthy foods. Education is first however, I think there has to be some movement to make healthy food available for all.

    What are your thoughts on that Diane ?

    twitter @karim_walji