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Benefits of antioxidants - on this page: Free Radicals, Oxidation, and What Can Antioxidants Help You
To appreciate the value of antioxidants, you must first understand the oxidation process. For example, if you cut an apple, it turns brown, this is an oxidation process. The surface of apple reacts with the oxygen in the air which causes the surface to turn brown gradually. Oxygen can work to break down other substances, creating what are called free radicals which are extremely damaging. If you do not know what antioxidants are, you may want to learn more here: What are antioxidants? Similar to the example of apple turns brown, the oxidation process takes place in your body as well. When you eat, talk, breath, work and exercise, your body produces free radicals, causing the damage to your cells. Antioxidants offer a defence against cell damage. To further understand how antioxidants work in your body and how the free radicals damage your cells, here is a simple explanation by using the analogy of burning charcoal: How do Antioxidants Work in Human Body? Research and expert shows that antioxidants have strong property to fight against free radicals’ damage. The possible benefits of antioxidants are: - Enhance immune system - you have less chance of getting sick
- Lower the risks of having cancer, infection, degenerative diseases, neurological illness and heart problems which are caused by the damage of free radicals. Antioxidants work by reducing the number and effect of free radicals, and may even work to inhibit the spread of cancerous cells.
- Slow down the ageing process – stay young and age gracefully. Despite the unavoidable aging process, a lot of people still favour the idea of staying young. There is an interesting finding of scientific research: human cells are only limited to certain number of cell divisions in a human lifetime. By the time you are 20 years old, most of your cells already used up half of their available cell divisions. By the time you are 40, your cells may only left with 30% of cell divisions. At this time, you will notice the changes internally or externally. Death occurs when your cells at last use up their naturally allocated cell divisions. This is the natural process, however, there are many ways to slow down this process. Among these, one of the benefits of antioxidants is to help you age gracefully.
- Lower the risks of getting illnesses caused by physical activities.
Our body produces antioxidants in the form of antioxidant enzymes to stop these damaging free radicals. However, when the number of free radicals is too high, we need to get the antioxidants from the food to help remove the free radicals that attacks your body cells. The common antioxidants can be found in fruit and vegetables. In conclusion, if you wish to stay young, age well in a healthy way, you need to minimise the free radicals formation with right amount of antioxidants. The amount of free radicals produce dependant on several factors. Knowing these risk factors and potential harmful effects of antioxidants’ enemy can help you to determine when you need to increase the antioxidants intake. Refer to: Why Are Antioxidants Important? for a explanation on harmful effects of free radicals and what causes the increase of free radicals production. [Top]
5 Simple Steps to Maximize the Benefits of Antioxidants- Enjoy 5 servings of fruits and vegetables with variety of colors daily. Have some grains, nuts, seeds, herbs. You may want to take 1 -2 cups of your favourite coffee. Refer to: Foods High in Antioxidants for a full list of foods (e.g fruit, herbs, beverages etc.) rich in antioxidants and the tips on balancing and choosing the antioxidants food.
- Cut down on fried foods and saturated fat. Do not eat burnt foods.
- Quit smoking and stay away from second hand smoke.
- Avoid strong sunlight between 10am – 4pm. If you need to go outdoor, remember to bring umbrella and use sun block.
- Manage stress, since stress is one of the factors causes free radicals formation.
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