Are you making the mistake of not consuming enough antioxidants in your diet? If not, ask yourself what is the harm? It has many benefits like it prevents from heart disease, cancer and a lot of other illness. If you are health conscious, you should be aware of foods that has antioxidants. If you have a health strategy to simply eat whatever you want, you can hope for the best but you might be planting the seeds of your own future illness.
Antioxidants plays an important role to fight free radicals, but what are free radicals and why are they harmful for your body and why does your body need protection against them?
A free radical is a molecule that is unpaired with electron. Since it has a free electron, it is highly reactive and very susceptible to oxidation.
Imagine how an exposed apple or potato turns into brown colour when it is left uncovered, this is because of oxidation and his is what free radicals are doing inside your body. Free radicals are not useful to our body and instead they steal nutrients from healthy cells and once the nutrients are stolen from healthy cells, they starve, they deteriorate and in the process, weaken the body’s immune defences and that is the reason our body needs to fight with them and get rid of them as soon as possible. Free radicals occur in our body every time and every minute of the day but environment has its effects too, the more you are in contact with the toxic environments like cigarette smoke, radioactivity, smog, pollution and similar things, more free radicals are attracted to the body.
So how can you slow the free radicals effect on your body? Antioxidants is the key. A healthy body is full of antioxidants normally and it is capable of managing free radicals easily but if your body is under physical or mental stress, that most of the people have both in today’s lifestyle, the body’s natural defence system may simply not enough to fight with free radicals.
Antioxidants are believed to help the body in protecting from free radical damage. They are scavengers or you can say garbage collectors. And they help to rid your blood vessels and cells of radical cells that would harm you. With all the evidence so far, no one should ignore the good effects of antioxidants and everyone should consume antioxidants as they have the capacity to slow the ageing process and can prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Antioxidants can make you look younger. Not only look younger but from inside too it makes you young, when you are good from inside, you live longer and can be at optimum health.
Foods which are rich in antioxidants gives you great protection from coronary heart diseases, and some age related diseases like Alzheimer’s diseases.
Antioxidants boosts your immune system, as mentioned above it prevents from the damages of free radicals in our body, as a result immune system is boosted and prevents from diseases like influenza and some other bacterial and viral infections.
It also reduces the risk of some cancers, which can be an incurable disease. It also prevent glaucoma.
Some of the major antioxidants are Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin E, Carotenoids, zinc, selenium.
Glutathione is known as the powerful type of antioxidant, and they are present naturally in our body when we are young but it depletes as we get older.
Some antioxidants does not suit some people, in that case you can take some delectable bite of some fruits like blueberry and raspberry which are known to contain a huge number of antioxidants.
Antioxidants can be found in foods like cranberries, green tea and in some chocolates. Antioxidants are also found in Vitamin C and Vitamin E. Antioxidants are found in carotenoids like beta- carotene. Antioxidants are found in many particles that our body produces like glutathione. Antioxidants are also found in some herbs.
So you should ensure that you are consuming a good amount of antioxidants. So eat the recommended 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables in a day and especially foods that are high in Vitamin E, Vitamin A and Vitamin C. But how many of us do that in reality? It is a challenging job to complete the nutritional requirements by eating the right food. That is why it is recommended to take the supplements that fulfil these needs as they help us to maintain cellular health. Antioxidants supplements includes Vitamin E, Vitamin C and beta carotene which is a form of Vitamin A. There are many datas available about these kind of health supplements but they are incomplete and it was found that only 30% of the people in the US are consuming any form of antioxidant supplements.