The Healing Power of Antioxidants
Learn about how the healing power of antioxidants can help boost your immune system
Antioxidants are molecules that fight free radicals in your body.
Free radicals are compounds that can cause harm if their levels become too high in your body. They’re linked to multiple illnesses, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Your body has its own antioxidant defenses to keep free radicals in check.
However, antioxidants are also found in food, especially in fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based, whole foods. Several vitamins, such as vitamins E and C, are effective antioxidants.
Antioxidant preservatives also play a crucial role in food production by increasing shelf life.
What Are Free Radicals
Free radicals are constantly being formed in your body.
Without the power of antioxidants, free radicals would cause serious harm very quickly, eventually resulting in death.
However, free radicals also serve important functions that are essential for health (1Trusted Source).
For example, your immune cells use free radicals to fight infections (2Trusted Source).
As a result, your body needs to maintain a certain balance of free radicals and antioxidants.
When free radicals outnumber antioxidants, it can lead to a state called oxidative stress.
Prolonged oxidative stress can damage your DNA and other important molecules in your body. Sometimes it even leads to cell death.
Damage to your DNA increases your risk of cancer, and some scientists have theorized that it plays a pivotal role in the aging process (3Trusted Source, 4Trusted Source).
Several lifestyle, stress, and environmental factors are known to promote excessive free radical formation and oxidative stress, including:
- air pollution
- cigarette smoke
- alcohol intake
- toxins
- high blood sugar levels (Trusted Source, Trusted Source)
- high intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (Trusted Source)
- radiation, including excessive sunbathing
- bacterial, fungal, or viral infections
- excessive intake of iron, magnesium, copper, or zinc (Trusted Source)
- too much or too little oxygen in your body (Trusted Source)
- intense and prolonged exercise, which causes tissue damage (Trusted Source)
- excessive intake of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E (Trusted Source)
- antioxidant deficiency (Trusted Source)
Prolonged oxidative stress leads to an increased risk of negative health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer.
Your diet is an essential source of antioxidants, which are found in animal and plant foods — especially vegetables, fruits, and berries.
Antioxidants in foods
Antioxidants are essential for the survival of all living things.
Your body generates its own antioxidants, such as the cellular antioxidant glutathione.
Plants and animals, as well as all other forms of life, have their own defenses against free radicals and oxidative damage.
Therefore, antioxidants are found in all whole foods of plant and animal origin.
Adequate antioxidant intake is important. In fact, your life depends on the intake of certain antioxidants — namely, vitamins C and E.
However, many other non-essential antioxidants occur in food. While they’re unnecessary for your body, they play an important role in general health.
The health benefits associated with a diet rich in plants is at least partially due to the variety of antioxidants they provide (Trusted Source).
Berries, green tea, coffee, and dark chocolate are renowned for being good sources of antioxidants (Trusted Source).
According to some studies, coffee is the single biggest source of antioxidants in the Western diet, but this is partly because the average individual doesn’t eat that many antioxidant-rich foods (Trusted Source).
Meat products and fish also contain antioxidants, but to a lesser extent than fruits and vegetables (Trusted Source).
The power of Antioxidants can increase the shelf life of both natural and processed foods.
Therefore, they’re frequently used as food additives. For instance, vitamin C is often added to processed foods to act as a preservative (Trusted Source).