Do you know what free radicals actually are? I didn't until recently. (I know I'm not the sharpest pencil in the drawer...) I've been reading and rereading (it takes a while to sink in) an awesome book called The Science of Skinny written by an organic chemist, Dee McCaffery. She explains in lay terms - sounds so much better than explaining for stupid people - the scientific stuff about food. I mean, check this out... a free radical is a molecule that contains an unpaired electron. It goes around like one of those Pac-Man gobbler things looking for an electron to replace the missing one. When it finds one in a healthy cell it snarfs it up causing that cell to become a free radical too. This can cause a huge amount of damage to our cells because of course we don't just ingest 1 free radical we eat zillions of them. Just one French fry can contain hoards of free radicals.
While our body makes free radicals on its own (as a natural by-product of our internal functions) we eat plenty of foods that cause additional free radicals. To make matters worse we live in environments that produce even more free radicals. Stress, pollution, lack of exercise, are just a few of the things we all encounter that produce free radicals. Scientists refer to the damage caused by free radicals as oxidative stress. Scientific studies are showing that oxidative stress is a major contributor to aging and disease. The good news of course, is that antioxidants help to repair this oxidative stress by providing that poor missing electron without damaging itself in the process.
More on oxidative stress and antioxidants another day. I need coffee.
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