Antioxidants

What is an Antioxidant? An antioxidant prevents oxidation. Oxidative stress occurs when someone has too many free radicals in his or her body and not enough antioxidants to combat them. A free radical is a molecule with an oxygen atom missing an electron. In its effort to replace the missing electron, the free radical steals from another molecule, which then becomes a free radical itself. It’s a vicious cycle. Antioxidants provide the free radical with its missing electron so that it doesn’t have to steal from another molecule, thus stopping the cycle. Your body produces free radicals as byproducts of functions it performs, such as when you digest foods, when you exercise, or when you’re exposed to tobacco and other pollutants. Your body also produces it's own antioxidants but not nearly enough to combat all of the free radicals your body encounters daily. If there are too many free radicals and not enough antioxidants, the balance is off — there are not enough antioxidants to go around, and the damaged cells become more susceptible to diseases such as cancer or heart disease. Antioxidants are found in many fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and spices. The potency of an antioxidant is expressed in ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) units, a unit of measurement for antioxidants developed by the National Institute on Aging in the National Institutes of Health (NIH).