Free radicals are the main focus of research when the uses of antioxidants are being researched.  You have probably heard of these damaging free radicals and the problems they can cause in the body, but you might not know how they are formed.  What a free radical is made of is molecules in our body that have an unpaired electron which makes them unstable.  The free radical is attempting to become stable when it goes after another molecule in an effort to gain the missing electron.  What it creates by taking the missing electron is another free radical.  The damage to the body occurs when the chain of free radicals is created coursing through the body.

Free radicals are created in the body by a natural process in most instances.  There are other times when free radicals are created by outside influences such as pollution and smoking.  When the free radicals are in great numbers they will create oxidation in the body.  The attack of the free radicals on other molecules will continue until the cells eventually die.

The damage that is caused by free radicals in the body is heart disease, eye disorders, premature aging, arthritis and cancer.  Antioxidants can help with this difficult and dangerous problem.  They will prevent the damage to the cells by attacking the free radicals.  This will effectively end the chain of damage that is caused by the free radicals in your body.  The studies on antioxidants have shown that antioxidants will help with the immune system, will help with eye problems, keep the cardiovascular function healthy, keep cholesterol levels balanced, and may help with premature aging.

The body naturally produces antioxidant enzymes with glutathione peroxidase, catalase and superoxide dismutase along with vitamins c and e.   

There are a great many fruits and vegetables that contain antioxidants.  There are some great resources you can add to your diet to get the benefits of antioxidants in your body.

Here is a partial list of the beneficial foods that contain antioxidants:

Cut an apple and leave half on the counter and as you know it turns brown. This is a result of oxidation. Rust on your car is due to oxidation. Oxidation is the interaction between oxygen molecules and all the different substances they may contact, from metal to living tissue. Sometimes oxidation is not such a bad thing, as in the formation of super-durable anodized aluminum. Other times oxidation can be destructive, such as the rusting of an automobile or the spoiling of fresh fruit. The process of oxidation depends on the amount of oxygen present in the air and the nature of the material it touches. True oxidation happens on a molecular level — we only see the large-scale effects as the oxygen causes free radicals on the surface to break away.
So, what has this got to do with your health? Well, when a man oxidizes, we call it aging and sometime cancer. Antioxidants counter this process. Nature gave us foods for our DNA to handle oxidation of our cells. The Stone Age population was hunter-gatherers and looked for colorful foods – up to 150 in variety throughout the seasons. These foods provided antioxidants. Anthropologists have stated that Harry and Sally of the Stone Age did not die of diabetes, cancer, heart attacks or stroke. They died from some traumatic event instead.
If Harry and Sally were alive today, they wouldn’t believe how limited in variety our food is today and more importantly, they would be stunned at how the antioxidants in what we do eat have been purged by processing.
If you want to reverse oxidation for you and your family, eat color fruits and vegetables from these groups:
1. RED includes but is not limited to:
Pink Grapefruit
Watermelon
Tomato
2. GREEN includes but is not limited to:
Bok Choy
Cabbage
Broccoli
3. GREEN/YELLOW includes but is not limited to:
Avocado
Spinach
Corn
4. RED/PURPLE includes but is not limited to
Blueberries
Red Apples
Grapes
5. ORANGE includes but is not limited to
Carrots
Cantaloupe
Mangos
6. ORANGE/YELLOW includes but is not limited to
Oranges
Pineapples
Peaches
7. GREEN/WHITE includes but is not limited to
Celery
Pears
Onions
FREE RADICALS can damage many molecules before the chain reaction loses steam and plays itself out. Antioxidants step in and stop the chain reaction. Antioxidants from the color in fruits and vegetables, as well as vitamins, try to keep us healthy by capturing as well as reversing the effect of free radicals.
If you are not getting enough fruits and vegetables, supplementation with antioxidants is highly suggested. Afterall, unless you are buying at the farm stand, you are not sure what has been bioengineered or otherwise altered that may reduce the fruit or vegetables’ ability to protect you. I believe in supplementation. You just have no way of knowing the level of free radicals and antioxidants in your body at any given time. Free radicals form in response to many things. Some of these are stress, defects that accumulate with the passing years, a less than optimal diet, smoking, and pollutants in the environment. To stave off premature aging, a consistent program of quality supplements will go a long way.
Antioxidants help your natural defense system do its job. You want to be absolutely sure you have all the ammunition your body needs to keep healthy and slow the aging process. Why not age gracefully? With what the supplement companies are learning all the time, the supplements are getting better with each reformulation. Take advantage of their research and testing.
When selecting an antioxidant supplement, I strongly recommend you find combination rather than single antioxidant as studies show they are more effective in combination. You need a team of antioxidants to boost your immune system and fight!
What to look for? I suggest you consider products with the following ingredients:
Vitamin C and E
Beta Carotene (Vitamin A)
Selenium
Schizandra Berries
HERBS that are known to stimulate the IMMUNE SYSTEM include:
Astragalus
Barberry
Boneset
Cat’s Claw
Chamomile
Echinacea (use short term for acute episodes)
Garlic
Ginger
Ginseng
Goldenseal
Gotu kola
Licorice
Marshmallow
Mistletoe
St. John’s wort
Making targeted food choices and supplementing with vitamins, minerals, and herbs will go a long way in keeping you healthy and slowing down the aging process. Why not avoid all those “preventable lifestyle diseases” when the answer lies before you?
Notes on herbs:
1. Long term use of licorice may cause water retention, elevated blood pressure, and a hormone imbalance knows as pseudoaldosteronism – so use sparingly and for short term regimens
2. Mistletoe may slow heart rate and affect blood pressure. If you have heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, or a history of stroke, consult your physician before using Mistletoe.
3. If you are taking antidepressant medication, consult a physician before using St. John’s wort.

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Dr. J.E. Williams shares on how to boost your immune system to fight the flu and avoid diseases.
Renegade Water Secrets with Dr. J.E. Williams, a pioneer in integrative medicine, an educational leader in “green medicines” and an internationally known speaker and published author, including his latest book, “Viral Immunity.”Kevin: So, you mentioned a one size fits all kind of routine. What does that incorporate? What’s a protocol that would kind of fit that?Dr. Williams: Let me first give you a couple of questions on testing your viral immunity for your listeners. My book, “Viral Immunity,” is a classic, and you know, it’s a large book, and it covers many areas, and half of the book is on the ten steps for improving your viral immunity in a lot of detail. But in my other book on viruses, “Beating the Flu,” I simplified some of the aspects of that and transferred it over, and I have a short test in there. I’ll give your listeners a couple of questions out of there where if you get more than two or three colds or ordinary flu a year, your immunity might be a little bit low. If you have asthma or allergies or any lung disease, your immunity might be a little low. If you’re over fifty or under fifteen, your immunity might be low. If you don’t take any antioxidants,
particularly vitamin C and E, you don’t exercise at all or very little, then your immunity might be at risk. If you don’t eat, if you eat less than four to five servings of fruits and vegetables-I recommend ten to twelve or more a day- then your immunity can be at risk. If you don’t get good sleep, if you’re under stress, many things like that are going to. . .in other words, that pretty much covers most Americans, doesn’t it?Kevin: Yeah. [laughing] Even some of the healthy ones, right?Dr. Williams: Even some of the healthy ones. So then we want to take a look at the first step on that and that is to make sure that you’re really covered with, that your antioxidant base is covered because that builds your strong immune foundation. And so, you may not recall, but I think maybe a generation before some of the leaders in natural health like yourself came on the planet, perhaps, but Linus Pauling, who brought us the idea about vitamin C, was just ridiculed and laughed at and so forth. Everybody knows him, but I remember in some of my. . .I never met him, but some of my friends and colleagues worked with him, studied with him, traveled with him, and everything was just vitamin C, vitamin C, vitamin C with these people.
We found out that it really, he probably was extreme in that it didn’t do everything that we thought it was or should do, but it turned out that as we researched more, it actually does a lot. And that opened the door, created that paradigm of the importance of antioxidants in fighting disease and fighting viruses. And so getting enough vitamin C would be step number one.
And then the other antioxidants that go with that, particularly zinc, because zinc is a key component of many metabolic actions in the body and especially the immune system. Your thymus gland which is your key immune organ which is centered in your chest, and for those listeners who are on a spiritual path understand then the center of the chest is what we call the “heart chakra” or the “Anahata chakra,” and that you would think the color that goes with it would be red. But it’s not; it’s green like the emerald green of the Amazon rain forest. And the thymus gland is centered in the center of the chest in that area of the heart chakra. And that having a strong thymus gland depends on zinc.
So, vitamin C, zinc, selenium. We’ve come to know, not just by theory, but by real scientific fact that American soils and now, worldwide soils are very depleted in selenium and other trace minerals, and that selenium is a key anti- viral nutrient and a key antioxidant and helps to not only prevent cancer, in some cases it can treat cancer in high dosages. So, that’s really the part of that universal immune system, making sure that everything is on track. It’s getting enough of the nutrients that would be deficient in even a good diet and getting them up to the levels that would support the immune system.Kevin: And what about like synthetic vitamin C versus an extract from say, camu camu berry or acerola cherry or rose hips or something like that? What are your thoughts on that?Dr. Williams: Well, camu camu comes from upper Amazon and Peru, and every street vendor, sitting or squatting down has a little bucket full of camu camu, and you walk down the street and you buy a handful for a couple of pennies and chew on, suck on those. The acerola berry is another one, as you mentioned, that came from the Caribbean. So a lot of these small fruits that are in the tropical zone, especially equatorial tropical zone, because of the intense sunlight. . . Just imagine yourself sitting out all day long at the top of a tree soaking up the sun day after day after day. What would you look like? More like a prune.Kevin: Yeah.Dr. Williams: I’m sure we would burn, too, right? So, these fruits are exposed to the sun, and they don’t burn, they don’t dry up until their life cycle is over. They’re robust and they, because they have high antioxidant levels under the skin, right at the edge of the skin, that undoes all the damage that all that amount of sunlight causes. And so they’re very, very high in the antioxidants, vitamin C being one. And any time that you can get your nutrients and particularly your antioxidants through food, you’re by far better off.
We know that lower dosages, the correct form of the antioxidant in lower dosages through foods are more highly assumable and they’re more biologically active in the body. And that’s always the key. Is the molecule biologically active? And if it is, to what percentage of the molecule is the activity recognized by our body? Our selves can tell the difference. Technically, the pharmacist will say there’s no difference. It’s the same molecule. You can look at it. You can design it. It’s bioidentically the same. But the fact is, is that it’s not. Because there are other molecules that are associated with it in the foods, and the body recognizes that and utilizes it better because they are more biologically active. Now, the pharmaceutical forms, the pure forms, also have a purpose, and you just could never eat enough camu camu to get up to, say, a hundred or 250 grams of vitamin C a day or in a few hours to be used as a therapy. So, they both play a role. First would be through food, and second, would be through supplemental nutrition from the pharmaceutically produced product.Kevin: I sure that’s the same with the zinc and the selenium, too.Dr. Williams: Absolutely. With all, especially with antioxidants, but almost all nutrients would be the same. There’s a fair amount of research, and I’ve listened to presentations by the antioxidant experts, and I think it’s quite convincing, and the research is quite, it’s actually pretty simple research that shows that foods outperform in terms of their biological activity and their effects in the body than supplements.
Now really, the big question is this. Does a product produced by squeezing up a bunch of camu camu or acerola and making it into a network marketing company, does that give you the same benefit as the acerola berry? [laughter] Or the synthetic vitamin C? And I think that’s where we lose. And we take information from one thing, and we develop it into a marketable product, and we, at that point is where we start to lose ground very, very rapidly. It’s kind of like all of a sudden we’re in a canoe, theoretically that should be able to cross the river, but now it has holes in it, and we’re just about ready to go over the
waterfall.
You can’t win for losing, in other words, in that type of scenario. So, what we’re doing is trying to take that to a next step which is to take these substances, process them in the laboratory, in pharmaceutical type laboratories. All natural medicine, but the machinery and everything are highest quality, sterile environments, and then they’re made into extracts so we’re essentially removing water and cellulose and the shells and things like that that would be excreted material from the body anyway, and then retaining the complex molecule and the other things that are attached to that into an extract form and then reconstituting that into another juice base. But if you… and so that’s kind of the next level. And those are called medical foods or medical beverages and the FDA has a little bit of a hard time knowing what to do with them because they, in fact that the research shows that they’re highly biologically available, contain highly biologically available substance and that they can actually treat or prevent different diseases. So now, you know, it’s almost like in a category of a drug.Kevin: Right.Dr. Williams: And many companies, they can’t, they just can’t afford to advance those types of products along, but you’ll see more and more of those.Kevin: OK, I pay a lot more then a couple pennies for my camu camu extract. [laughs] I’ll tell you that.Dr. Williams: Yeah, exactly. But all of these little fruits and berries, that you know, I see all these companies and it reminds me, I can see them in my minds eye right now as we talk, and every time somebody mentions the different names of these companies I, “ah, yes,” I can remember the plant, they’re like friends to me, they’re just like people almost. They’re, you know, as you can recall a person’s face that you met and that you may run into all the time or maybe you had a significant encounter, but you never saw them again, but you’ll still remember them. I remember the plants like that, and the fruits like that and it’s a little nostalgic for me. You wonder, “Gee how did that happen? How did this big business come out of that little thing that we were researching?” And one of the main steps in the research that goes on, particularly with the tropical substances, is to discover what their, which antioxidants they have and which are the most common and what’s their percentages. And then they start comparing them against, they usually compare them against vitamin C or vitamin E. So they say, you know, has twice the activity of you know, as opposed to vitamin C or something.

Antioxidants-a molecule found in substance such as ascorbic acid, glutathione, and melatonin-are said to prevent a number of serious diseases, such as cancer and heart disease. An antioxidant is a molecule capable of slowing or preventing the oxidation of other molecules. However, what is not widely known is that antioxidants could also possibly prevent autism. This is what researchers from the University of Arkansas claim, based on their study in 2005. According to their breakthrough and somewhat controversial study, the antioxidant levels of children suffering from autism are significantly lower compared to children without autism.
This study seems only slightly insignificant when judging it from face value. After all, the same can be said about a number of diseases. However, the significance of antioxidants in the body-and the implications this research have-is an important progress in the fight against autism. But first, what are antioxidants? Why is this substance important in the human body?
Antioxidants can prevent or prolong the oxidation process of other molecules from the substances that people take in. Oxidation (or the reduction-oxidation reaction), on the other hand, is a reaction where that produces free radicals. These free radicals can damage certain cells in the body, causing a number of diseases and ailments. The reduction-oxidation process is inevitable, to say the least, since certain substances can produce free radicals. A number of studies have proven that these free radicals are present even in the very air in the atmosphere.
So what does this got to do with autism? Oxidants can cause brain injuries-in fact, the brain is very vulnerable to oxidation damages. On the other hand, antioxidants are also responsible for toxin elimination from the body. With the presence of oxidants, the body will be unable to detoxify themselves from harmful heavy metal substances present in their body, another supposed cause of autism. Heavy metal substances can be found in vaccines, so children are already exposed to harmful chemicals early on. This supposed effect of vaccines is contested by many medical experts, but a number of sectors claim vaccines play a part in autism development in children.
The researchers from the University of Arkansas still believe that autism is a genetic ailment. However, in an interview with Forbes.com, a researcher from the said university have said that while autism is caused by genetics, environmental triggers play a part in the disease’s genetic basis. In addition, antioxidants also prevent free radicals from harming the brain. Certain studies made by several countries have already linked brain inflammation to autism, and this inflammation can be caused by oxidants. A strengthened immune system, thanks to antioxidants, can provide protection against brain damage.
Hence, many doctors, all over the country, see antioxidants as one of the more valuable elements in the fight against autism. A number of professionals, too, such as those from the Autism Research Institute, encourage parents to give their children with autism food that are rich with antioxidants, as well as supplements that prevent oxidation in the body.

For people trying to stay young within themselves both their heart and their spirit are what matters. However, staying young on the outside has its challenges. Keeping your skin looking young is certainly a daunting task. Many people are successful in achieving this without anyone else even knowing, and when various people inquire as to what their antiaging secret is, they would answer with ‘antioxidants’.
Many of us have noticed this type of phenomenon on TV or perhaps on the Internet, yet we all ponder what this secret is all about. An antioxidant is a form of chemical that counteracts what are known as free radicals into non-toxic elements, so the primary effect is to stop the body’s cells from being destroyed and contributing to the aging process. In the human body there is a process known as the oxidizing process. From this process radicals are produced from our body’s cells oxidizing and consequently producing energy which is called metabolism in the process of their normal functioning.
Well-Known Food Sources
The reality is antioxidants are not an antiaging secret after all. They exist universally in our day to day life, in practically all natural food sources that can be found, ranging from numerous types of vegetables to fruits and seafoods to oils.
The reason that antioxidants are sometimes referred to as antiaging secrets is due to the fact that it assists in reducing the aging process, with one of the most notable benefits being that there are minimal side effects compared to other forms of supplements that promise a more youthful looking appearance for your skin.
There are many fruits that contain numerous antioxidants within them, some of which include but are not limited to cherries, melons, prunes, apples, Strawberries, mangoes, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, blackberries, and nearly all types of plums. Various vegetables that contain antioxidants are artichokes, red ball pepper, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, cantaloupe, beets, spinach as well as others. Fish as well as various other seafoods also contain many traces of antioxidants. Additionally, antioxidants (our antiaging secret) can be found in numerous types of oils, such as hazelnut, almond oil, sunflower oil, and safflower oil.
Antioxidant Vitamins
Essentially, what ever food incorporating any of vitamin B6, vitamin A, vitamin B12, vitamin E, vitamin C, Folic acid, carotene, or Selenium would include antioxidants within them. Because most of the products that we consume on a daily basis have these natural antioxidants within them we can confidently assert that the true antiaging secret is the all-natural foods that we eat on a daily basis.
In addition to assisting in slowing the aging process, antioxidants actually have numerous other benefits as well. They help with the prevention of various diseases such as chronic infections, cataracts, stroke, heart disease, cancer and even Alzheimer’s disease.

When our bodies use oxygen, the cells produce free radicals that cause damage to the body’s cellular make-up. Antioxidants are attracted to free radicals and basically will neutralize them.

Many of today’s health problems such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, macular degeneration and others, can be directly attributed to oxidative damage caused by free radicals ravaging the body. This is not only a theory, the role the antioxidants plays in neutralizing free radicals is well documented in medical journals as far back as the 1950s.

When we are young, the body seems to be blessed and can generally maintain at peek efficiency. By the time we reach the age of twenty five, the disease of aging begins. As the aging process slowly progresses, our bodies begin to need more assistance to stay in shape. We don’t feel this aging process actually happening because this actually begins happening at the cellular level of our bodies. In time, the muscle tissue gets less substantial, the bones start becoming more brittle and our immune system is compromised.

When our immune system becomes compromised, we are more prone to infection and disease. Why do our bodies begin breaking down at the cellular level? The main culprit is free radicals. Without enough antioxidants in our bodies to counter the free radicals, they slowly create the oxidative damage that leaves us open to the opportunistic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and many others.

A little more than fifty years ago, scientists found that heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, cataracts, arthritis and many neuro-degenerative diseases were linked to the destruction caused by free radicals.

Free radicals are formed when weak bonds within a molecule split. These free radicals are highly unstable that attack and capture the closest molecule electron. After this happens, that molecule having lost it’s electron, turns into a free radical and the whole process keeps recycling as a chain reaction. Left unchecked, free radicals create molecular chains that breakdown the bodies ability to regenerate properly. Because antioxidants neutralize the free radicals, keeping enough antioxidants active within the body is paramount.

Antioxidants can naturally be found in many varieties of food sources. There are over 4,000 compounds in foods that have antioxidants. Some of the food rich sources are kidney and pinto beans, blueberries, cranberries, artichoke, blackberries, raspberries, prunes, strawberries, apples, pecans, sweet cherries, plums, russet potatoes and many more.

Also, vitamin A, C and E, the mineral selenium and betacarotene are rich in antioxidants. The non-nutrient antioxidants that come from pytochemicals, lycopenes in tomatoes, athocyanins in cranberries that are believed to have greater effects at fighting free radicals than either vitamins or minerals. Many supplemental vitamins can be purchased through the health and wellness industry.

Many of the experts in health and nutrition all agree that as we get older, we need more antioxidant rich foods in our daily diets to fight off the free radicals from compromising our body and immune system. It is also widely believed that certain antioxidants also aid in slowly down the aging process. Could it be that free radicals play an important role in the aging process itself?

Although nutritionists in the health field have been acknowledging the benefits of antioxidants for several decades, it has only been recently that the medical field has discovered scientific evidence that backs up the role that antioxidants do play in our health.

Today, many medical scientists worldwide are finding strong evidence that antioxidants to play a very large role in the anti-aging process. Many of the degenerative effects of aging can be countered by a combination of nutrients. One of those key nutrients found to be most effective in combating the disease of aging itself is antioxidants.

How much antioxidants do we need in our diet? How much is a recommended daily allowance? To date there is no medical agency within the U.S. that has a set guideline concerning antioxidants in our diet. A few agencies generically recommend 5 servings a day of fruit and vegetables that are rich in antioxidants.

How much is too much? Again, no one medical agency seems to have a figure on this. You could say the jury is still out. Although the medical field agrees on the role that antioxidants play in maintaining our healthy bodies, they do not necessarily agree on how much we should need.

There are some within the health and wellness field that believe we need a lot more antioxidants in our bodies than just consuming from natural sources. There are many nutritional, supplemental vitamins on the market today that provide the healthy antioxidants our body needs to effectively fight off free radicals.