When you hear or see advertisement footage, you may often hear about products that are rich in antioxidants. You may also often read articles about healthy foods that contain antioxidants. But do you know what antioxidants are ? How does this molecule work for the body, and what are the benefits? Simply stated, antioxidants are properties of various compounds that can fight free radicals. So, antioxidants are not the names of substances, but the nature of molecules that help protect the body from disease.
How do antioxidants work in the body?
The way antioxidants work is related to how free radicals work. Free radicals in the body are molecules that have free electrons, where electrons should pair together. These free electrons make free radicals so reactive that they can cause damage to surrounding cells. Because of the nature of electrons in pairs, the free electrons present in these free radical molecules can donate electrons or receive electrons from healthy body cell molecules. Healthy body cell molecules will then be the same as free radicals, giving rise to many other free radicals. Reactive free radicals then affect the membrane to the cell nucleus and damage the components contained in a cell, triggering the cell to destroy itself. Although it can attack all types of cells,
The main function of antioxidants is to donate electrons to unpaired electrons found in free radical molecules, preventing these free electrons from attracting electrons from healthy body cells. What is special about the work of antioxidants is that after giving electrons, antioxidants will not turn into free radicals as if other cells were giving electrons. So that the work of antioxidants such as neutralizing the reactive nature of free radical molecules.
What are the sources of antioxidants?
Lots of vitamins and phytonutrients , antioxidants are easy to find in your daily food and drinks. Examples of antioxidants are vitamin C, vitamin E, and carotenoids such as lutein, beta carotene, and lycopene which are abundant in vegetables and fruits. Vitamin E helps protect body cells from damage that can cause cancer, heart disease, and eye disease. Vitamin E usually works together with vitamin C to prevent various degenerative diseases. Vitamin E can be found in oils derived from plants, whole-grain products , seeds, and nuts.
Apart from vitamin E, vitamin C is perhaps the most widely known type of antioxidant. Help protect the body from infection, prevent cell damage, to help the production of collagen which serves to attach bones with muscles are some of the benefits of vitamin C. You can find vitamin C in oranges, mangoes, papayas, strawberries, to vegetables like tomatoes, broccoli, and potatoes.
Besides being derived from vitamins, antioxidants can also be found in phytonutrients, a component that is only found in vegetables and fruits and has a role in giving the color or aroma unique to the fruit vegetables. Phytonutrients from carotenoids contain many antioxidants. For example there are beta carotene, lycopene, and lutein which are found in carrots, tomatoes, and dark green vegetables such as broccoli and kale.
Antioxidants and disease prevention
As previously explained, antioxidants are counteracting free radicals. If left unchecked, free radicals can cause damage to healthy body cells. Free radicals are suspected as a cause of various diseases such as cancer, heart disease, reduced vision ability, to Alzheimer’s . Antioxidants as a neutralizing reactive nature of free radicals can prevent these diseases, but the effect will be greater if antioxidants are consumed in their natural form, not consumed in supplement form.
Several studies have shown that consumption of antioxidant supplements is not very influential on the prevention of diseases caused by free radicals. Although these studies have their respective limitations, but research related to the benefits of eating fruits that are rich in antioxidants actually gives positive results to fight the adverse effects of free radicals.
