Dr. Plant discusses nature's defense against DNA and cellular damage, also known as antioxidants.
Take a deep breath; do you know you just supplied your body with enough material to generate 3,240,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 324 followed by 22 "zeros") free radicals?
A free radical is any molecule that has an unpaired electron. Free radicals are molecular instigators, and will often start a chain reaction of unstable molecules within the cell. This is because the unpaired electron of the free radical will metaphorically pull the electron off of another molecule (e.g. protein, DNA, phospholipid, etc.), thereby causing those molecules to become unstable.
For the average person, free radicals cause between 10,000 and 1,000,000 molecular lesions (or mutations) in every cell per day. The abundance of free radicals we are exposed to cause an insurmountable amount of damage to our genetic and cellular health.
What is the solution, to stop breathing? The solution the body uses to mitigate the risk of free radical damage is with molecules called "antioxidants".
Antioxidants are molecules that have an electron to "donate." So when an antioxidant comes into contact with a free radical they readily donate their extra electron to the greedy free radical. This prevents the free radical from stealing an electron from a more precious molecule such as DNA or proteins.
As stated earlier, we produce an abundance of free radicals just from the air we breathe, not to mention the food we consume or the environment we're exposed to. In fact the diets and environments that have become the norm are not only lacking in antioxidants, but are also greatly enriched in free radicals. This means more than ever we need to provide our body with the antioxidants it needs to fight off the damaging influence of free radicals.
Make sure you are getting the antioxidants your body needs through natural sources.
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