Understanding Free Radicals and Antioxidants

Recently someone asked me why antioxidants are useful to our bodies. I suppose the question arose due to the overload of the words "Antioxidant" and "Free Radical." Those are major buzzwords in today's marketing schemes. For some reason, the public has recognized that having antioxidants is a good thing, and so those selling products slap that label on anything they can. Just look at any new bottle of 7up, and you will see that they have added Vitamin A & E to their beverage so they can get a share of the antioxidant craze. If you look at a package trying to figure out why antioxidants are good for you, the answer you will most likely find is that antioxidants protect you from free radicals.

I don't claim to be an absolute expert on the subject, however I do have a fairly strong understanding of why antioxidants are good for you, and also why free radicals aren't. My major in college was nuclear medicine technology-which required me to take courses such as Nuclear Chemistry and Physics, as well as Radiation Biology. That may seem like a random fact, but it does tie in with free radicals and antioxidants. Let me explain.

I think it will be easier to start with free radicals. Free radicals are molecules inside your bodies cells that are highly reactive. One way that they form is when radiation hits a cell. You might wonder when you ever come into contact with radiation. Just look up for the answer, the sun is constantly bombarding the earth with gamma rays and charged particles. These forms of radiation are called Ionizing Radiation because, as you might have guessed, they have enough energy to form ions. Most people have an idea of why radiation can be bad for you-it can cause cancer by messing with cells DNA. The cells start growing out of control, and then you have a problem.

To understand this better, we need to get a little more technical. When radiation hits a cell, it rarely causes direct DNA damage. This is because DNA takes up so little space in a cell. Radiation usually hits is water in our cells, because water (H2O) makes up most of our bodies. When the radiation hits the water, it ionizes it, or knocks off an electron, forming a new molecule. This new molecule is a Free Radical, and is highly reactive. In order to gain stability, the free radical will bind to anything, tearing an electron from whatever it attaches to. This is where most DNA damage comes from. I made a diagram below to illustrate the point.
As you can see the radiation enters the cell from, in this case, the sun. The radiation runs smack dab into a water molecule and, if you look to the image to the right, turns it into a free radical. Obviously this model is highly simplified, I am well aware there is more to a cell then water and DNA. Also, free radicals destroy more then just DNA in a cell, but the DNA is the only thing that really matters. Even if the free radical managed to kill a cell by destroying its other components, it wouldn't really matter because we have billions of cells. If, however, the DNA is damaged in a certain way, it can form cancer (that is pretty simplified).

Now let's look at Antioxidants. To make it simple, antioxidants stop free radicals. My biology professor referred to antioxidants as "Free Radical Scavengers." They neutralize those highly reactive free radicals, making it safe once more inside our bodies. I won't get any more technical than that because, quite frankly, I don't understand that part as well (I try not to BS).

I would also like to add that just because a product has the word "Antioxidant" on it in big letters doesn't mean the product is good for you. In fact, there is a pretty good chance that if they are banking on recent health buzzwords to sell their product it probably isn't good for you.

So there you have it, a simple way to understand free radicals and antioxidants. Now go impress your friends.

(Please check out my other posts in the BLOG ARCHIVE, which is somewhere on the right side of the screen, you may have to scroll up or down for it. Enjoy!)