What Are Antioxidants?

The human body’s cells are faced with threats every day, from lack of the proper foods to viruses and infections, even the air you breathe or come from the sun’s reaction on the skin. Our bodies even create their own threats as a natural byproduct from turning food into energy. These threats are called free radicals and they damage the cells.

Free radicals are almost magnetically attracted to electrons. They get the electrons by stealing them from the cells that will give them up. By stealing the electrons, the free radicals tinker with the cells’ function or structure. They can even change the DNA code. Free radicals play a role in many diseases like cancer and heart disease.

The good news is that we can defend ourselves from free radicals. The body, in its marvelous design, has the ability to make scads of molecules that extinguish the free radicals, much like water extinguishes a fire. We also get free radical defense from the food we eat. The defenders that are found in food are called antioxidants. Antioxidants work by generously giving electrons freely to the free radicals, thereby doing away with the need for them to rob them from the body’s cells.

An antioxidant isn’t really a substance, it’s more like a chemical reactor that acts as an electron donor, a lot like the way people donate blood to those who are deficient.

There are loads of different substances that can act as antioxidants. A few are vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene. There are several antioxidant supplements that can be purchased over the counter, but research has shown that these supplements do not work nearly as well as the antioxidants found in food.

Sources:
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/disorders/cad/vitamin_e.aspx

http://www.healthcastle.com/antioxidant.shtml


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