Antioxidant and free radicals

The Antioxidant and free radicals story has been going on for years. Antioxidants have always been the best line of defence against free radicals. Let us go into a little more depth;

Free radicals are essentially atoms. They can also be classified as a group of atoms. These atoms have an odd number of electrons and are formed when there is an interaction between oxygen and certain types of molecules. Once these free radicals are formed, possible chain reactions can then occur. A reaction like this can be quite dangerous if the reaction happens with important cellular components like that of DNA and cell membrane. This type of reaction can cause cells to function very poorly and even die.

This is where antioxidants come in. Antioxidants are essentially molecules that interact safely with free radicals. By reacting with these free radicals, antioxidants then effectively stop the chain reaction from occurring before very important molecules are at risk of getting damaged.

The principle antioxidants are vitamin C, E and beta-carotene. It is found that your body is unable to manufacture these nutrients, and that one way to get them is by eating foods rich in these nutrients.

Please feel free to get more information by reading the following pages in regards to these principle antioxidants;

• Viatmin C
• Vitamin E
• Vitamin A