What are antioxidants, and what are their benefits?

During your journey to find the best healthy diets and the ones that fit your goals, as you discover foods included in these diets, you surely found that important healthy foods contain antioxidants. This is a plus for you, recommended over other foods.

But do you really know what antioxidants are? Or why they matter? In this article, we'll go over antioxidants in detail, their health benefits, and how to get them.

What are antioxidants? Antioxidants

Antioxidants are molecules that fight free radicals in the body. Free radicals are compounds that can cause serious damage. If their levels get too high in the body, they can lead to many diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

The body can naturally defend itself against free radical damage, but it also needs antioxidants to protect cells from harm and boost its ability to fight free radicals.

You can get antioxidants from food, especially fruits, veggies, and whole plant-based foods. There are also many vitamins that act as effective antioxidants, like vitamins E and C.

Besides that, antioxidant preservatives play an important role in food production by extending shelf life.

How do free radicals work in the body?

Free radicals form continuously in the body and can have essential health roles. Immune cells may use free radicals to fight infections.

But without antioxidants in the body, free radicals can cause serious damage very quickly by reacting with cells, which can eventually lead to death. So the body needs to keep a balance between free radicals and antioxidants.

When free radicals outnumber antioxidants in the body, it can cause a condition called oxidative stress.

Prolonged oxidative stress can damage DNA and other key molecules in the body. It can get worse leading to cell death and cause diseases like heart and blood vessel disease, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, aging diseases, and Alzheimer's.

There are many factors that cause excess free radical production in the body and oxidative stress. These include:-

• Air pollution.
• Cigarette smoke.
• Alcohol consumption.
• Poisons.
• Large amounts of unsaturated fatty acids.
• High blood sugar levels.
• Radiation and excessive sunbathing.
• Bacterial, fungal, and viral infections.
• Overconsumption of iron andmagnesium copper andzinc.
• Oxygen levels in the body either too low or too high.
• Lack of antioxidants.
• Doing intense and long exercise.

Importance of antioxidants

Antioxidants fight free radicals and also have anti-inflammatory roles. They can protect body organs like the heart by helping prevent artery hardening, stabilize blood pressure, and lower cholesterol levels.

Besides that, antioxidants can reduce risks of eye diseases and gettingdiabetes type 2, and cognitive decline.

Antioxidants in Foods

Eating foods rich in nutrients helps boost health, get antioxidants, reduce free radical effects and oxidative stress, and ease cell damage.

You can find antioxidants in many different foods, with large amounts in fruits andvegetables andnuts andwhole grains, and smaller amounts can be found in meat andpoultry andfish.

Processed and fast foods lack antioxidants.

Eating antioxidants helps lower the risk of certain cancers, for example, an antioxidant called Quercetin which you can get from apples andonions andparsley and citrus. It can kill abnormal cells effectively while keeping normal cells healthy.

There are some foods that have strong antioxidants, and they include:

• pomegranate.
•  salmon fish.
•  grapes.
•  apples.
•  spinach.
•  dark chocolate.
•  berries.
•  Beetroot.

Types of dietary antioxidants

Antioxidants can be classified based on their solubility into two types:

1. Water-soluble antioxidants, which work in the fluid inside and outside cells, like vitamin C.

2.  Fat-soluble antioxidants, which mainly work in cell membranes, like vitamin E.

There is a group of plant antioxidants with many important health benefits for the body, called flavonoids.

Antioxidant Supplements

Experts recommend getting antioxidants from food sources because the body absorbs them better and they have many health benefits. Still, there are many supplements available that can help increase or fill the gap of antioxidants in your diet.

Taking too many antioxidants can backfire. Overdoing isolated antioxidant supplements may cause toxic effects and actually increase oxidative damage instead of stopping it.

Also, research shows high doses of antioxidants might raise the risk of death.

However, low-dose supplements like multivitamins can be helpful if you’re lacking important nutrients, including antioxidants.

A balanced, healthy diet with different food groups rich in various nutrients is the best way to get antioxidants, boost your health, and gain many important benefits.

Article source:- 1, 2.