Antioxidants are an important part of a healthy life by preventing or helping the body recover from various degenerative or age-related health problems such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and eye diseases like glaucoma and macular degeneration. Antioxidants are used by the body to neutralize damage caused by oxidation, the natural process by which oxygen brought into the body as we breathe combines with other elements during the metabolic process to release energy. Antioxidant supplements commonly include vitamins A, C, and E, and minerals such as copper, zinc, and selenium.

The damage caused by oxidation – where oxygen atoms steal an electron from another atom or molecule which must in turn search for another electron – is neutralized by antioxidants. Nearly everything in the world is continuously oxidized: fat turns rancid, iron rusts, and exposed fruit turns brown. All plant and animal cells are always in a state of oxidation, where oxygen atoms which have lost an electron attack nearby cells to retrieve an electron.

Oxygen and other atoms or molecules that lack an electron are known as free radicals. Free radicals are unstable, and in an effort to stabilize themselves they will steal an electron from nearby cells, thereby damaging the cell that they oxidize until the free radical is neutralized by an antioxidant. Free radicals are a natural result of the body’s metabolic process, and if there are not enough readily available antioxidants to make up the shortfall of electrons and neutralize free radicals, serious cell damage will result.

When our body is young and healthy it generates many of the necessary antioxidants it requires, and gets the rest from ingested food. But as we age, the body’s ability to generate antioxidants begins to decrease, eventually leading to free radicals outnumbering antioxidants in the body. Potential health risks grow with this trend, as the body is unable to repair the free radical damage and is subjected to age-related degenerative diseases.

As the imbalance between free radicals and antioxidants continues to grow, degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease are thought to be caused, among other things, by free radicals attacking proteins that make up much of the body’s cells, tissues and brain. By addressing the imbalance between antioxidants and free radicals in the body, antioxidant supplementation can be very effective in slowing the aging process and associated degenerative diseases.