Antioxidants Slow the Aging Process
If you are asking what it is that Antioxidants do then you have come to the right place. For one, our website contains volumes of books documenting the benefits of Antioxidants as well as Antioxidant Products that you can purchase so you can gain first hand knowledge. Additionally, our website owner – yes, that is me – made Nutrition and Science much more than a casual interest by obtaining a degree in Nutritional Sciences from a prestigious university. Science, intuition and experience all testify that Antioxidants are among the most important factors to determine your life expectancy. In fact they are right up there with oxygen, genetics and safe driving!
Why can we make such a bold statement as to say that Antioxidants can influence longevity? It is simple. The best explanation is accomplished by starting with what happens without Antioxidants.
Free Radicals either enter our body or are generated from within our body as a byproduct of many different things. Breathing smoke, for example, introduces millions and millions of Free Radicals into one’s body. Exercising creates byproducts from the energy expenditure including free radicals. Stepping out side into the sun introduces solar energy to our skin whereupon the radiant energy zaps cells and produces free radicals.
Free Radicals are actually more serious and scary than their name suggests. Free Radicals are molecules that are out of balance due to an altered state of electrons, and they are searching for a solution to their altered state and will still an electron from what ever is close at hand which will give up an electron. The Free Radicals can be much more aggressive at grabbing electrons than the elements around them are at retaining their own electrons. The consequence is that Free Radicals can destroy cells and tissue – whatever is in their path, so to speak. And the more Free Radicals in our body, the more damage that will occur.
Left to their own devices, Free Radicals are the death of us. The damaged caused by Free Radicals is the aging process.
Enter Antioxidants!…
Antioxidants are compounds that can sacrifice electrons to neutralize the Free Radicals, and by so doing protect our body. The more Antioxidants we have in our body, the greater our defense against the affect of Free Radicals. The more Antioxidants we have in our body, the fewer Free Radicals will exist in our body. The fewer the Free Radicals, the Slower the Aging process will occur, and the longer we will live.
I’m occasionally asked “can Antioxidants reverse the aging process?”
My answer is this…
Our life is a balance between two opposing processes that occur within us all. On the one hand is the Aging process which left unchecked will lead us to an untimely death. On the other hand is the Regeneration process which enables our body to create trillions of replacement cells so that throughout our entire body we are continually renewing and creating new cells to replace the old that die. When the Aging process significantly overtakes the Regeneration process, we know what happens. On the other hand, if we can SLOW the Aging process significantly enough to enable the Regeneration process to dominate our health equation, then my answer is “YES” – we can actually reverse the aging process because the regeneration process can produce new life within us that can shine through noticeably and we can look younger and feel younger.
The key is that we must SLOW the Aging process, and that is accomplished by the use of Antioxidants.
There is much hope for all of us once we understand the forces at work with our bodies that influence our health and wellness, and if we then find a solution to favorably improve the impact of those forces on our lives.
