What is antioxidant and how will it help you? What is oxidative stress? Oxidative stress happens inside the body as well as the outside. Look at the skin of older people, and you know what we are talking about. The same degeneration is happening inside of our bodies as well. And it is the cause of most of the chronic degenerative diseases we have been talking about. What causes the oxidative stress? There is this thing called free radical, which is a bad by-product of the metabolism (burning) process inside of our bodies. Most of the time the body does it right. But there are times these free radical came out and its accumulating inside our bodies. Whichever part of the body receives the most free radical damage is the first to wear out and potentially develop a degenerative disease. If it is the eye, you can develop cataracts. If its the blood vessels, you could have heart attack or stroke. If it goes to your joint space, you can develop arthritis... and on and on and on.... What creates Free-Radicals - excessive exercises - excessive stress - air pollution - cigarette smoke - pollution of our food and water - ultraviolet sunlight - medication and radiation How to fight against it? Free radicals are mainly oxygen molecules or atoms that have at least one unpaired electron in their outer orbit. They therefore have electrical charges and will try to get electron from any molecules or substances near them, which can be the cell membrane, protein, fats, vessel wall, or even DNA nucleus of a cell. This kind of damage is what we call oxidative stress. To prevent damage free radicals will cause, we just have to neutralize them by letting them pair with antioxidants instead. Once they are paired, they are already harmless to you. How to find antioxidants and how do they work? Our bodies do not produce all antioxidants. More essential antioxidants are available in food and supplements we eat. As long as we are taking in an adequate amount of antioxidants to neutralize the free radicals, we will be okay. Antioxidants are available in vegetables and fruits. Most common are Vitamins C, E, A and beta-carotene. There are also gluthathione, alpha-lypolic acid and bioflavanoid antioxidants from food we eat. It is important also to know that antioxidants work alongside with one another and only one kind is not enough. For example, vitamin C is water soluble and therefore is best to work in our blood and plasma. Vitamin E is fat soluble and will work best in cell membrane. Glutathione is the best inside the cell. Alpha-lipoic acid works both within the cell membrane and plasma. Vitamin C and Alpha-lipoic acid have the ability to regenerate vitamin E and glutathione so they can be used again. Our goal here is to have more antioxidants than free radicals in our bodies. What else helps? Aside from the above-mentioned antioxidants, researches show the B-cofactors (vitamins B1, B2, B6, B12 and folic acid) and antioxidant minerals also play their parts in this fight against the oxidative stress being fuel and food to keep the process running properly. Read more... Follow the link in the first comment...
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 20:09:33 +0000
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