Free Radicals and Oxidation

Free Radicals

Antioxidants have the ability to neutralize free radicals and so your body uses them to keep your free radical population to adequate levels and minimize the damage they cause. If your free radical levels are excessive they will accelerate your aging and basically cause havoc to your health.

Here are just some of the diseases linked to excess free radicals:

Various Cancers Arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis
Heart Disease Stroke
Arthritis Diabetes
Alzheimer’s Emphysema
Ulcers Parkinson’s Disease
Cataracts Senility

What is Oxidation

Think of a potato that you just peeled and left sitting for 20 minutes on the kitchen sink. The exposed inside part of the potato has turned brown. This is an example of oxidation (chemicals inside the apple have reacted with oxygen in the air) and this is what oxidation does on a molecular level.

What that means to us is that oxidation creates free radicals, which are not good for us.

Actually oxidation takes place continuously inside all of us. Our normal breathing in of oxygen (respiration) creates oxidation which in turn creates free radicals. So, you can’t avoid oxidation or the creation of those nasty free radicals, they are continuous and inescapable. It’s nothing to worry about because they are necessary in many of your metabolic processes. The bottom line is simply to ensure that oxidative stress and the production of free radicals do not increase to the point of over production.

Things like smoking including second hand smoke, air pollution, electromagnetic radiation including sunlight and x-rays, stress, exercise, food additives, toxic chemicals, smoked and barbecued foods, lack of nutrients in our diet, pharmaceutical drugs, and even alcohol all create free radicals.

Civilization is impacted by these factors every single day. Thirty or forty years ago things were much different. Food was not processed as it is today and had far more nutrition with much greater antioxidant content. Pollution and toxins were not as high either.

So we need to make sure we take enough antioxidants to meet the double challenge of these destructive free radical promoters and an antioxidant depleted food chain.

That is why there is a wide array of antioxidant supplements on the market designed to counteract the effects of oxidation.