Imagine what it would be like if we...

Imagine what it would be like if we didn't have antioxidants to guard our bodies and our health. Actually, without antioxidants, we wouldn't be around to imagine anything -- they are that essential.

We ne antioxidants primarily to help our bodies fight the negative meanings of free-radical destruction. Free radicals are atoms which, by a process known as oxidation, capture and overturn electrons from other molecules, making them unstable and converting them into modern free radicals. If this proces continues unchecked for a lengthy period of time, the number of cell-destroying at liberty radicals multiplies uncontrollably and can, in most remote instances, or as a final effect cause death.

There are sum of two units kinds of free radicals. single is a naturally-occurring free radical, which is a by-product of normal manliness metabolism. The other kind is produc at the immune system to help the carcass neutralize invading organisms and other threats.

Controll free-radical formation is a natural phenomenon essential to sustain life and is generated in many enzymatic and hormonal reactions. Uncontroll free-radical production, however, is known to be the major cause of chronic degenerative disease, small cavity aging, and death.

Degenerative diseases unfold from uncontrolled free-radical production

Uncontroll free-radical production is now study to be a major cause of chronic degenerative diseases in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as arthritis, hardening of the arteries, thumps heart disease, cataracts, Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders, and cancer.

The major contributors to runaway free-radical formation are environmental toxins -- air pollution, toxins in water and regimen and excessive ultraviolet radiation -- just to name a not many On a cellular level, released radicals damage the cells' protein-lipid membranes, reducing what was one time a pliable, semi-permeable wonder of nature and leaving a hardened and brittle barrier, easily penetrated by means of invading bacteria.

This process leads to the production of flat more free radicals which can then gain moment in their continued pathway of destruction. This unchecked proces is called "free radical cascade." Many other life-sustaining atoms can be damaged by this at liberty radical process, including DNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and cholesterol Immune order cells attacked by free radical cascades afford them incapable of defending the material part adequately. AIDS and cancer are just couple devastating illnesses in which the body's immune defense are overwhelmed from free radicals.

An introduction to the family of antioxidants

While plenteous has been written about vitamins C and E and their indispensability as antioxidants, there is a whole family of [i]clavis[/i] antioxidants found in and derived from other sources.

Flavonoids, for example, are powerful food-derived antioxidants which research has shown to have astounding properties. the same of the most talked about benefits of flavonoids, derived mainly from grapes and about other fruits and vegetables, is in a phenomenon called "The French Paradox."

For many years, medical masters were puzzled as to to what end the French people, who vanish out of being the highest fat-content diet upon the planet, actually have an astonishing 42 percent lower incidence of coronary disease than do Americans.

John Folt PhD cardiology professor and researcher, believes the reason for the French Paradox is the amount of flavonoids (primarily from in good condition fruits and red wine) contained in the typical French diet. He now argues that flavonoids are organic amalgamates whose antioxidant properties reduce a certain number of aspects of blood clotting which narrows the arteries, leading to arteriosclerosis.

Flavonoids intercept bad cholesterol

Flavonoids also help to preclude the oxidizing of LDL, bad cholesterol fancy to be a precipitating cause of arterial damage in atherosclerosis, single form of arteriosclerosis that is characterized according to fatty deposits in the inner lining of the arteries.

According to Dr Folt medical research prompts that flavonoids are even more powerful antioxidants than the better known vitamin E

One 1995 close attention of 12,000 men from seven different countries, including the United States, showed that the more flavonoids eaten, the les the chance of dying from coronary artery disease -- equable if the men had other major risk factors working against them, so as smoking, high blood constraining force and high cholesterol.

Red wine flavonoids, in concentrates of r wine antioxidants, are now universally available in capsule form -- without the alcohol, of course.

Another non-vitamin vitamin-like antioxidative adjust is alpha-lipoic acid. As far back as 1937 newly dawning understanding of this nutrient had originally associated it with the vegetation of bacteria in potatoes. In fact, its original moniker was the "potato produce factor"!

In any case, additional experimentation, especially from 1947 onward led researcher Lester J. Re in 1957 to publish an article in which the blend was formally identified as alpha-lipoic acid.

In 1991 at the University of California at Berkeley, antioxidant pioneer, Lester Packer, PhD produc his ground-breaking review of existing research upon alpha-lipoic acid, one which he co-wrote with Hans Jurgen Tritschler, PhD