Oxidation, Free Radicals, and Antioxidants - Simply Put...Finally!

With an aging population, almost everybody you talk to has some form of interest in understanding what these terms mean. When you ask an expert to explain, you’ll most likely get a chemistry lesson that will make your eyes glaze over like a bad hangover. Most of us don’t really understand the chemistry behind why we need antioxidants. We just know we need them to be healthy. But why? I will try to explain, in Lehman’s terms, what each of these terms represent. At a later posting, I will explain the pros and cons of our current systems used to measure the potency of antioxidants in our foods. But for this article let’s just understand what they are. Oxidation is the process of when an atom in an element lose electrons. Examples of oxidation are rust on metal and the browning of fruit after being exposed to air. Now, imagine that on a molecular level in your body. Once that atom loses that electron it becomes a free radical. In an effort to get it’s electron back, it steals from other elements in the body. The element it steals from becomes seriously damaged. Damaged elements in the body can create serious health problems such as cancer and other diseases. That’s it clean and simple. No, how about this explanation? A free radical is the “criminal.” Oxidation is “poverty” (the reason the free radical became a criminal). Antioxidants are “education” (what keeps the poverty and criminal role from ever happening). How’s that?

What’s also important to understand is what causes this whole “breakdown” of the system to happen? In a controlled way, free radicals are normal reactions in the body and are needed to help neutralize viruses and bacteria. It’s when they “flood” the system that problems begin to happen. Environmental conditions such as pollution, radiation, cigarette smoke, and herbicides contribute to that flood. However, most of us won’t spray herbicides next to a nuclear plant while smoking a cigarette in a polluted part of town. For those that do, sorry about that one but if you go drink some Chi3 (shameless plug there) you should be OK. Antioxidant’s are the “levees” that keep the floods at bay in our system. The USDA recommends that we consume foods that contain 3,000 to 5,000 antioxidants per day. That’s a pretty general standard as there are people that need more and those that require less. How those levels are measured is coming up in our next article. Until then, here’s to your health!!