How Free Radicals and Antioxidants Affect Aging – part 2

In our last blog, we looked at the way that free radicals and antioxidants interact. In a nutshell, atoms and molecules don’t like having an unpaired electron. This is an unstable state for the molecule or atom, and it craves having an electron so strongly that it will steal the electron from another atom or molecule. This will leave the second molecule with an unpaired electron, converting it to a free radical. Free radicals do damage in the cell because if they steal an electron from vital cell infrastructure (like the DNA molecule or the cell wall), it can cause cell damage or death.

In contrast, antioxidants have an electron to spare, and they cheerfully donate that electron to any free radical in the vicinity. This satisfies the free radical’s craving, stopping it from doing any more damage, but it also leaves the antioxidant in a stable state that doesn’t do damage.

An abundance of free radicals doing damage can lead to an increased risk of cancer and other diseases. All of this is going on at a miniature level, too small to be seen by the naked eye, but the resulting damage can leave you with results that you can feel, like fatigue, malaise, and overall lack of well-being.

When free radicals are wreaking havoc, you must have enough antioxidants in your system to quiet all of them down. Think back to the children’s game we mentioned in our last article. If you had only two children in white shirts to play the part of the antioxidants, they would not be able to satisfy the need, and the destructive melee would continue. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that you are providing your cells with an abundance of antioxidants so that you can cover the bases for however many free radicals are present.

However, there’s a snag. Your body cannot manufacture many of the most valuable antioxidants. You must get them from your diet.

The top antioxidant is Vitamin E, so be sure that you are consuming adequate levels of this vitamin. (Your skin will thank you for it, too.) Other common vitamin sources of antioxidants are Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Beta Carotene, and Folic Acid. You can also get antioxidants from foods such as blueberries, beans, and nuts. See this helpful list of the top 20 foods that contain antioxidants.

The free radical theory of aging (FRTA) states that organisms age because cells accumulate free radical damage over time. While more research is needed to provide conclusive evidence for this theory, it’s not a bad idea to work on slowing the damage that free radicals are doing in your cells. You can do this by consuming enough antioxidants to continuously nullify these free radicals.

One of the most visible places where you’ll see the damage from free radicals is your skin. Free radicals are one of the primary factors that cause wrinkles. When free radicals damage the cell walls of your skin cells, your skin visibly ages. Antioxidants are like a defense mechanism for your skin cells. Each cell is continuously repairing the damage done to it by free radicals, UV rays, and other reactive oxygen species. However, if the speed of damage exceeds the speed of repair, then when those cells divide, they will pass on their errors to the daughter cells, increasing the potential for tumors.

If this is going on at a visible level in your skin, you can only imagine how there is a similar effect in every organ of your body from free radicals doing similar damage.

One of the easiest ways to make sure that you are delivering adequate antioxidants to your cells is to receive our vitamin injections. Here at Rejuvime Medical, we offer IV Nutrient Therapy where we deliver specific infusions of vitamins that enhance your well-being, recovery from endurance athletics, and energy.

Rejuvime Medical is an anti-aging clinic dedicated to delivering to you the greatest and most effective medical technologies available anywhere. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation to get your customized anti-aging plan. We look forward to serving you.

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