What are Antioxidants?

When you read the word antioxidant, you might think of a cleaning product. Lately, it’s becoming popular in health and wellness spheres, and it’s likely you’ve seen it here and there. It’s actually an important topic that is not so hard to follow.

Antioxidants are substances, man-made or natural, that can prevent or delay cellular damage.^[1] Some antioxidants can be produced naturally in our bodies, while other types are best obtained from foods such as berries, nuts, vegetables, spices and more. Specific foods with high antioxidant content include dark chocolate, pecans, blueberries, strawberries, artichokes, goji berries, raspberries, kale, red cabbage, beans, beets and spinach.^[2]

How do Antioxidants work?

In this article, we talk about and review basic chemistry concepts of how antioxidants work and why they are important for us. We talk about compounds and molecules, which you can imagine as very very small particles inside our bodies. Just so you can attempt to visualize how tiny these are, think about this: the average human has 30 to 40 trillion cells.^[3] Each cell, in turn, has 42 million molecules.^[4] Anything that happens at a molecular level, will have implications at a cellular level, and eventually, a physical one. Let’s take a look:

Free radicals

Antioxidants prevent cell damage by fighting free radicals. Free radicals are another type of substance in the body that tend to be unstable. These loose molecules are responsible for causing cell damage. Depending on the duration and area of the body, this damage can eventually manifest as diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, heart diseases, diabetes and atherosclerosis.^[5]

To learn more, check out our article on the Antioxidant TypesA bit of chemistry

To understand how antioxidants help our bodies and make us healthy, let’s first take a quick run through the chemistry behind it. Free radicals occur naturally in the body’s chemical processes. They are a byproduct of metabolism in the form of a ‘loose’ or unpaired electron. Electrons are stable and happy in pairs. This free radical or loose electron that is leftover from any chemical process causes damage as it looks for other electrons to pair with and stabilize itself. This cell damage can be a broken cell membrane, a mutation that grows into a tumor, or even one of the diseases mentioned earlier.^[6]

Oxidative stress

Scientists use the word ‘scavenge’ to explain how antioxidants reduce free radicals. Antioxidants hunt free radicals, donate an electron and neutralize them, minimizing their capacity to cause damage. Oxidative stress is the term used to describe this cell (oxidative) damage which happens when there is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants.^[7] In daily modern life, simple things such as mental stress, pollutants in the environment like heavy metals, alcohol, radiation, certain fats and oils, chemical solvents and more can generate free radicals.^[8]

Take Home Message: Let’s Eat More Antioxidants!

Now that we understand a bit better how antioxidants and free radicals play a role in our bodies and overall health, we have to start incorporating more foods with antioxidants to our diets. The list is actually very comprehensive and aside from the general categories of legumes, berries, dark leafy greens, grains and nuts, there are other sources of antioxidants. In fact, antioxidants have many classifications and subclassifications. In general, there are vitamins, minerals, carotenoids and polyphenols. To learn more, check out our article on the Antioxidant Types

Sources

1. Medlineplus.gov. (2019). Antioxidants. [online] Available at: https://medlineplus.gov/antioxidants.html [Accessed 23 Sep. 2019].
2. Raman, R. (2018). 12 Healthy Foods High in Antioxidants. [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-antioxidants#section12 [Accessed 23 Sep. 2019].
3. Ph.D., Y. (2019). How many cells are in the human body?. [online] Medical News Today. Available at: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318342.php [Accessed 25 Sep. 2019].
4. Steemit.com. (2019). Finally we know how many molecules are in a cell — Steemit. [online] Available at: https://steemit.com/steemstem/@rickyxp/finally-we-know-how-many-molecules-are-in-a-cell [Accessed 25 Sep. 2019].
5. Arnarson, A. (2019). Antioxidants Explained in Simple Terms. [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/antioxidants-explained#what-they-are [Accessed 25 Sep. 2019].
6. Szalay, J. (2019). What Are Free Radicals?. [online] livescience.com. Available at: https://www.livescience.com/54901-free-radicals.html [Accessed 25 Sep. 2019].
7. Lobo, V., Patil, A., Phatak, A. and Chandra, N. (2010). Free radicals, antioxidants and functional foods: Impact on human health. Pharmacognosy Reviews, 4(8), p.118.
8. Pizzino, G., Irrera, N., Cucinotta, M., Pallio, G., Mannino, F., Arcoraci, V., Squadrito, F., Altavilla, D. and Bitto, A. (2017). Oxidative Stress: Harms and Benefits for Human Health. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2017, pp.1-13.