I am a big fan of antioxidants, it is something I care since long time and I strongly recommend to consider it as soon as possible. I like to see them almost as vacuum cleaner for our body! I will explain you why!
Life became incredibly frenetic and fast, not a big surprise! There is barely the time to sit down and enjoy a decent lunch or dinner, we are running left and right and lacking hours of good, deep sleep. On top, pollution, radiations, chemicals are all over around us: we are exposed to that since we are born. We are stressed and too quickly angry. We exceed with smoking, drinking or simply sunbathing, outdoor or indoor (solarium addiction)... All of that is bombarding our body with free radicals.
Free radicals are molecular species highly reactive and unstable, able to exist independently. Basically, free radicals just move around in our body till they find another molecular species to grab. The problem starts when they grab DNA, proteins or lipids and therefore damaging cells: this leads to development of diseases. Naturally, our body produces free radicals but we are made to fight against it: there should be a balance and when this balance is broken, only then we risk to get seriously sick. Human body is permanently fighting against aging process and we know that free radical damage cells leading to pathological changes associated with aging. Reducing free radicals or decreasing the production of it, we might delate aging and avoid occurrence of certain diseases.
We could spend hours talking about free radicals but I would rather stay general and move on explaining how to clean up the body from those radicals.
As I said at the beginning there are molecular species called antioxidant which act as a vacuum cleaner in our body. We also said that free radicals are molecular species highly reactive and unstable: so antioxidant are able to make free radicals not anymore reactive and to stabilize them, therefore to neutralize their action. Amazing!
Some antioxidant are produced by normal metabolism in human body other are found in diet. The last ones are not possible to be produced in human body and therefore they have to be necessarily introduced with food on a daily basis. Those are vitamins like vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene.
The first way antioxidants defend us is by suppressing the formation of free radicals; secondly, once free radicals are already formed, they block or break the chain propagation reaction; finally they repair and replace new antioxidants so that the level of oxidation in a cell will not be too high, bringing back to normal condition and balance.
I guess your question is, where can I find antioxidants then and how much shall I eat in order to keep healthy?
Well, strong antioxidant activities have been found in berries, cherries, citrus, prunes and olives; in vegetable like leeks, onions and garlic. Beta-carotene in pumpkins apricots, carrots, spinach; vitamin C in oranges kiwi broccoli spinach strawberries. If your diet include five daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables, you should be fine with that right amount of antioxidants that you need in order to protect you. Obviously, you should pay attention to have a good variation of fruits and vegetables during the week and to consider other aspects of your life which might affect level of free radicals, like smoking, stress, extreme physical activity, etc.
I understand the difficulties to have always fresh fruit and vegetables with you, therefore you could supplement your diet with some antioxidant and this is also what I do time to time. I love to stay natural in all aspects of life and I'm not such a fan of using many supplements therefore I recently discovered a company from Germany, LebePur (meaning in German – Pure Life) which is producing superfood in powder 100% plants based. I use this powder in my smoothies, shakes and müsli and it's so easy to use and to carry with you anywhere. Just have a look here at the website https://www.lebepur.com/and specifically, for the topic of this article, I would recommend to try the antioxidant powder. You can buy directly at the following links.
Those plants are gently dried and finely grounded. The origin of raw material is carefully selected and everything absolutely organic. No preservatives added. Just try it!
If your diet is complete enough, you might do not need it anyway!
Keep healthy!
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