What are Antioxidants and How Do they Work?

Looking to improve your health starts with a question as simple as “What are Antioxidants”?

Through science and research, we continue to educate ourselves on what makes us healthy, what causes our diseases, and what we can do to protect ourselves so that we live healthy lives. If you have ever done any research on ways to improve your health, from the foods to eat, juices to drink, or even supplements to take, you are bound to see certain phrases and terms repeated on a regular basis.

One such term is used for every health and wellness product and is even now frequently being used in the skincare/cosmetic industry and that is the term antioxidant.

What Are Antioxidants?

Antioxidants have become a household term with all the publicity and marketing they have received. However, gravity is also a household term but not everyone quite understands how gravity works. The same holds true for antioxidants. They sound like they should improve our health, and we like to know that they are in the products we are taking, but what are they really doing for, and to our bodies?

Before getting into what antioxidants are and how they work, you must first understand why they exist. What is it that makes antioxidants so important to our health?

To answer that question we remember that we live in a world that is bound by cause and effect. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you apply force to a glass on your table, the force is the action and the glass sliding across the table is the reaction.

In the world of antioxidants, they are not a force nor a reaction, more they exist out of balance. See for everything that we do on a day-to-day basis, from our bodies process the foods we eat, to the environment we live to the activities we partake in, there are reactions that occur. The result of those actions is called free radicals.

Free radicals as you will see are bad for our health, and they are not something that we want in great quantities within our bodies. Enter in antioxidants and they neutralize and eliminate the free radicals, thus keeping our cells healthy and our overall health in good standing order. Confused?

Luckily there is a great verbal as well as visual explanation of what free radicals and antioxidants are and what they respectively do to our bodies, good and bad, written by Sophia Breene. Sophia walks you through What Are Antioxidants and How they Work with simple-to-understand language and great visuals.

Understanding the function of antioxidants allows you to grasp the big picture of what they do for your health and why they are seemingly appearing in all new products. While some products may use the term simply as a marketing catchphrase, once you understand the meaning and their function, you will be better prepared to improve your overall health.

As always we appreciate your comments and emails and don’t forget to share this information with your friends so they too can benefit from the powers of antioxidants.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.