Free-radicals, anti-oxidants and vitamins

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What are free radicals?

The effects of nowadays harsh environment with its pollution and dangerous toxins, processed food, bad habits such as smoking and drug use, ever increasing UV (sun-light) exposure, and more harmful things around us are increasingly better understood by medical scientists and nutritionists to cause serious health problems to our body. One concern at the forefront of all this is free radical damage.

In this blog article you will learn more about free radicals, what you can do to decrease your level of free radicals with the use of anti-oxidants, how free radicals increase your risk of developing cancer and how free radicals make you age faster.

What are free radicals?
Nature's molecules including those in our bodies typically have two electrons but the effects of environmental harm, some of the molecules end up having only one electron. They're “free” from its balancing partner and unstable (“radical”) as a result of that.
When these unstable molecules come in contact with healthy molecules, the free radical electron will attempt to pull one electron away from the healthy molecule in an effort to stabilize itself. That creates a chain reaction as more molecules become unbalanced. This damaging process is known as  oxidative stress.

What are antioxidants?
In comparison with regular molecules, antioxidants are equipped with one extra electron which they can "donate" to the free radical molecules and in that way counteract the oxidative stress.  Certain vitamins and nutrients are antioxidants including vitamin A, vitamin C and vitamin E. They even slow the process of aging if you take them regularly.

Eating sufficient vitamins on a daily basis
So, in order to get rid of as many free radicals as possible you should ensure yourself to take in a sufficient amount of fruits and vegetables, preferably on a daily basis. Doing so keeps your body (and skin) healthy, while it slows down the aging process and keeps the free-radicals in your precious body at an absolute minimum level. This gives you more energy, a better overall health and less stress.

Free radicals cause cancer

Free radicals increase the risk to develop cancer
Did you know that when you maintain a large amount of free radicals in your body, the risk of cancer increases as well? But there are a few things you should know when you take anti-oxidants to reduce the risk of cancer forming. One of the major causes of cancer is excessive damage done by free radicals to the cells in your body, which severely harms your DNA resulting in some cells mutating into cancerous cells. One other reason why we have too many free radicals, and thus cellular damage which in turn leads to cancer is that eating processed foods results in more free radicals than when you would eat whole foods. They contain less nutrients and anti-oxidants to act as free radical fixers.