Ever wondered how antioxidants fight against the signs of aging?
How do you get all those wrinkles?
What about those annoying crow’s feet at the corners of your eyes or those laugh lines around your mouth?
Sure, these are part of the normal aging process, right?
What causes aging anyway and is there anyway to slow the effects of aging?
In biological terms, the normal processes of oxidation are what lead to aging.
Oxidation causes the production of substances called free radicals which are highly reactive. These free radicals can readily react with and damage other molecules.
Note: Molecules means free radicals, don’t make the distinction between foreign bodies and healthy cells.
And when free radicals start attacking the body’s own cells, you can guess what the results are…it’s called aging.
If only there was a way to get rid of those harmful free radicals…
Well, her’s the good news for you! Free radicals are natural enemies of antioxidants. The function of antioxidants is to destroy harmful free radicals, counteracting the damaging of tissues…
And in effect, treating aging or causing it to slow down.
Antioxidants are commonplace in nature. In fact, antioxidants are abundant in more common vitamins such as:
* Retinol or Vitamin A
* Ascorbic acid or Vitamin C
* Tocopherol or Vitamin E
* Selenium…
Antioxidants can be nutrients (vitamins and minerals) as well as enzymes (proteins in your body that assist in chemical reactions).
Antioxidants are believed to play an important role in slowing the development of such chronic illnesses as:
* Heart disease
* Stroke
* Cancer
* Alzheimer’s disease
* Rheumatoid arthritis
* Cataracts…
Although antioxidants cannot completely rid your body of free radicals, they can however work to slow the effects or minimize the damage caused.
Antioxidants block the process of oxidation by neutralizing free radicals. By neutralizing, they themselves become oxidized.
For this reason, your body is always in need of a constant source of antioxidants.
How antioxidants work is a two-way process.
First is the chain-breaking and this is where the antioxidant comes in to break the chain reaction of free radicals turning other molecules into free radicals like them.
Chain-breaking is also called Stabilization…
The other aspect is more on the slowing or preventive side.
Antioxidant enzymes like superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase slow oxidation by reducing the rate of chain initiation.
This time, instead of waiting for the free radicals to make a long chain of free radicals, antioxidants scavenge initiating radicals and destroy them before oxidation is set in motion.
This is why an antioxidant has the health benefits of anti-aging which is delayed and not only that, diseases and other illnesses caused by harmful free radicals are kept in check.
Vitamins, Fruit and Vegetables!
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