Understanding Antioxidants and their Potential

High-quality sources of antioxidants have become some of the most widely sought after dietary supplements over recent years. This is thanks to their potential benefits for both the body and mind, as well as their potential to protect against disease and aging. However, how they work exactly is not widely understood.

So let’s go back to basics on the most fundamental level of the human body in order to help you get a deeper understanding of antioxidants and why they’re so essential to your health.

Essentially, this all comes back to diet. The body is great at breaking down food and drink into smaller molecules. Day after day, food and drink is metabolised through a series of chemical reactions, breaking it into smaller parts so they can be used to fuel our lives and reassembled into larger parts to build our bodies.

All this building and restructuring of molecules is done at an even deeper level than simple biology. On the atomic level, atoms exchange particles as they move between molecules. They lose and gain electrons, desperately trying to maintain electromagnetic balance with the protons in their core. Unfortunately, this is not always easy.

When atoms fall out of balance, they can create free radicals. These are unbalanced molecules, ready to react dangerously with and damage other molecules, including our own DNA and healthy cells.

There are no two ways around it – free radicals are highly harmful and linked to degenerative diseases. This process is also known as oxidative stress.

To make matters worse, oxidative stress can be exacerbated by many other factors in our lives including pollution, sunlight, alcohol, cigarettes and stress, just to name but a few.

So how do antioxidants remedy this situation?

If an antioxidant encounters a free radical, it’s remarkably able to freely donate an electron. This quickly and effortlessly prevents any risks to healthy molecules by neutralising the free radical.

The body can generally generate its own antioxidants, or get them from dietary sources such as leafy green vegetables, fruits, turmeric, cacao and green tea – all of which are particularly rich in antioxidants.

Unfortunately, in the modern world, many diets and lifestyles lack the nutrition required to keep the body adequately equipped with antioxidants. In these cases, supplementation is a great idea to quickly and conveniently top up your antioxidants and keep your body in balance.

We offer a complete range of antioxidants, many from organic sources and of an extremely high purity and quality. Let us know how you’ve worked antioxidants into your diet in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!