What Are Antioxidants? (Road to Healthy part 16)

Hello :)

Today I'm here with a blog post that Kai in particular requested from me, she wanted me to talk a bit about antioxidants, so I figured that I should start from the basics and talk about what those mysterious creatures, that we call antioxidants, even are.

Let's start from the word itself, which I think explains the general meaning pretty well on it's own. Antioxidants - anti, as I'm sure all know means the opposition to something, to stop, inhibit, to do the opposite and oxidants are compounds that oxidize, to those who perhaps have not been to a chemistry class in a while, or have otherwise forgotten the process of oxidation, it could be described as both the gain of oxigen as well as the loss of hydrogen, but in the widest sense of it, it is the loss of electrons. So as the word itself says it, antioxidants are compounds or molecules that inhibit the process of oxidation.

Although that is a very simple way of describing them and I think almost everyone can fathom what I just wrote, I feel like that is not enough to truly describe or at least I wouldn't be satisfied, if I truly wished to understand what what antioxidants are.

Picture is from HERE

So let's go on. If we go more indepth into what happens in our body during this oxidation process, then we'd find out that free radicals are produced during this process. Free radicals, I would describe as, little creatures, who are extremely active and cause a chain of reactions, creating more free radicals as well as damaging tissues, I imagine extremely active extroverts, who wake up at 5 in the morning, to work out for three hours, while smiling the entire time as the human versions of free radicals, not because they'd be harmful to my health, but because their just so active and to us introverts they're just straight up scary, but I'm getting off track....

Free radicals, from the scientific side of it, are compounds that have an unpaired electron, usually they go in pairs, but if for some reason one leaves, free radicals are created, for example UV radiation can cause that. 

A more practical example I could bring, would be that if you cut up a banana, then it gets brown around the edges of the cut, the banana is exposed to oxygen and therefore it oxidises, but if you sprinkle lemon juice or mix it in a fruit salad with kiwi, then it will not get brown as fast, because the vitamin C in those fruits will prevent it. Vitamin C is probably the most commonly known antioxidant.

Antioxidants are actually a very large group of moleculs and they can be categorised into enzymes, micro-nutrients and compounds. Antioxidant enzymes are created in the body and they contain certain metals, micro-nutrients are the ones we get from our diet, so the vitamins that are usually referred as antioxidants (C, A, E and B vitamins for example) and the antioxidant compounds, as could be expected are the ones that are formed in the body from all of the nutrients that we eat.

All of the different free radicals require different antioxidants to neutralise them in our body, that's what also explains why so many experiments with antioxidants have been not so successful, because just one antioxidant won't solve everything, there has to be a combination of them and enough of all types for optimal health.

I don't wish to make this blog post too long, since noone has time to read such long posts, but I will continue this topic soon, stay tuned, I hope it gave some type of insight to antioxidants in general.

Until next post,

Kaiela :)