What I Learned About Antioxidant Supplements

People who care about health, care about antioxidants.  They will buy antioxidant supplements and they do it for one important reason.  They want the benefits that antioxidants can supply for their life . Often though, they might not do as much as they hope .

  So what’s all the fuss about antioxidants?

Antioxidants are the antithesis of free radicals. To understand the value of antioxidants , you need to appreciate how free radicals- rogue electrons- can hurt your health.

Your body is a complex system. It is a collection of organs, like your skin and liver and lungs , that each performs a unique job . Each must perform their role for you to be truly healthy.  Your organs are living tissue, composed of countless cells made up of molecules and their component atoms, each with their proper count of electrons. Atoms are tied together into molecules by sharing electrons , but they can become damaged and give up an electron. This makes a free radical and the atom missing an electron will “steal ” it from the closest source , which means there will be another unstable atom.  What you end up with is a chain reaction that if left alone , will harm the cells within the organ tissue and will sooner or later damage the organ.

An antioxidant is a molecule that is capable of donating an electron to stabilize a free radical .  An antioxidant molecule will not become a free radical itself because it will either remain stable with the missing electron or it will be too weak to steal an electron from another atom.  The chain reaction is halted .  What’s important to understand – to get a feel for the scale- is that, according to a well known researcher who studies antioxidants – whose name is Bruce Ames – a cell in your body will be attacked up to 10,000 times in a single day by free radicals.  And there are trillions of cells in our bodies.

 This onrush by free radicals contributes to (and some will say primarily causes) many of the acute and chronic diseases that we associate with aging.  Alzheimers disease, acute and chronic inflammation, coronary disease, cancer, type II diabetes, Parkinsons disease, rheumatoid arthritis and some types of dementia have all been traced back to free radical damage. And thats not the full list.

I believe that it’s really important to cut back your own output of free radicals, get more antioxidants and deciding to shop for antioxidant supplements is one thing you can try .  But it isn’t the whole picture.  You should also:

1- Clean up your act .  It’s difficult to fix the damage when you’re still causing it, so this would be a good time to reduce the creation of free radicals and there are lots of things you can do to help.  You can stay away from smoking and smokey rooms , air and water pollution, junk food , substance abuse and even too much exercise.

 2- Watch your diet .  Eat morefruit and vegetables .  Which ones? This list is long but go for green foods and look for blue foods.  Think raw and fresh.

3- Buy antioxidants and antioxidant supplements.  Supplements like Vitamins C and E, Resveratrol and Cordyceps are first-class examples of antioxidants supplements that are available to buy . Choose carefully because sources, quality and usability will vary widely, but you can include them as part of your plan.

 4- Glutathione is the super antioxidant but not effective as an oral supplement .  Oral glutathione supplements apparently won’t survive the digestive tract to be absorbed into the bloodstream.  Instead you can take a Glutathione precursor like MAX GXL.  You can also help to support your body’s production of Glutathione by eating more asparagus and broccoli.