Why we need antioxidants, vitamins and nutrition?

What makes antioxidants so important?

   Can they really help us move from ordinary to excellent health? To understand how antioxidants can help you, step back for a moment to look at your body as a whole and at its interrelationship with the environment around you.
Your body is complex structure with several dynamic organ system that function independently and interdependently. To sustain you in your environment, these interconnected system require fuel. That fuel – the food you take in when you eat – is broken down into macro-nutrients: fats, carbohydrates, and protein.
These elements continuously pump blood through your body.This energy allows your brain to function, your muscles to contract, and your immune system to fight off infection.
. Your body’s process of consuming and using energy is called its metabolism. This process goes on constantly, day and night, within your body. In a way, this use of energy can be compared to car’s burning of gasoline. To run at full efficiently, the car requires not only gasoline as its energy source, but also the right additives to keep the energy from “knocking”. Your body requires not only carbohydrates, protein, and fat for energy, but also the right balance of macronutrients to run at its best.

The Role of Oxygen:

   Without oxygen, your body could not convert the food that you consume into usable energy. This essential substance allows you to metabolize fats, protein, and carbohydrates. The body’s use of oxygen involves a process known as oxidative reactions. These essential reactions convert food energy sources into useful molecular subunits and discard what is no longer needed of functional.

   Everything you do – from the most basic actions of seeing, hearing, laughing, slepeing, and thinking – depends on your body’s use of oxygen. Oxygen is key to your survival and to the proper functioning of your vital organs.

Free radicals:

  .  In a car, the running motor created an exhaust that is emitted through the tailpipe. The gases in that exhaust (carbon monoxide, sulfur, and nitrogen oxides) are harmful pollutants. In a similar way, as your body uses molecules to create energy, is produces an ” exhaust” that includes substances known as free radicals. Because of their structure, free radicals are toxic: you can think of them as  harmful pollutants. Of the many kinds of free radicals, the most common are oxygen-free radicals. As the cells in your body consume millions of oxygen molecules each minute, huge numbers of these oxygen-free radicals are produced.

    Free radicals are molecules with one or more unpaired electrons; they are unstable and highly reactive. To regain stability, free radicals attack other molecules in search of an electron. free radicals can target molecules in any cell in the body from which to grab an electron. The molecule attacked by the free radical loses an electron and damaged.

    Just as your body constantly consumes and uses energy, the free radicals produces during this  process constantly damage molecules in cells throughout your body. In fact, it is estimated that every cell in your body is subjected to approximately 10,000 “hits” by free radicals each day.

     Why normal metabolism produces some free radicals, many circumstances – such as illness, cigarette smoking, radiation, and irritating chemicals in the air – can increase the number of free radicals produced. When the level of free radicals gets too high, as in smokers, for example, the body is said to be in a state of oxidative stress.

    Fortunately, your cells have built-in system to repair the damage free radicals cause, and your body can usually maintain a reasonable balance between the rate of damage and the rate of repair. The cell may not be damaged enough to be considered “sick” but will not function well enough to be considered healthy.

   Consider, for example, the oxidative damage and repair that takes place in your body if you exercise too vigorously. The working muscles consume large quantities of oxygen and and produce huge numbers of free radicals. The next day, you feel muscle fatigue, largely the effect of free radical damage. If you rest for a day or two, your muscles repair themselves and the pain goes away. This process of damage and repair is known as oxidative stress and cellular healing.

   On the other hand, the damage from free radicals is sometimes too extensive to repair. If free radicals attack and damage enough molecules, cell death may occur, and entire organs may be damaged and even cease to work, or your body’s DNA molecules may be permanently damaged, which could eventually trigger the development of a disease such as cancer. Some scientists believe that free radicals are responsible for or contribute significantly to the development of a number of chronic illnesses and to aging itself.

     If free radicals are so bad, you may wonder, why does body continue to produce them?  Like oxygen itself – which is essential but which can be toxic – free radicals help protect your body in some important ways. Certain immune cells in your body release free radicals than can kill invading bacteria and help prevent infections, for example. Because of this, we need to balance the destructive and the beneficial capabilities of these molecules.
In most cases, fortunately, you can maintain this balance through cellular repair system and through antioxidants, substances that ” neutralize” free radicals before enough of them accumulate to damage the healthy cells in your body.

Antioxidant, Vitamins,  Minerals

The substances that neutralize free radicals are called antioxidants. Some antioxidants occur naturally in the environment; your body manufacturers other ( for example, enzymes with names like ( superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase). As I mentioned, certain vitamins and minerals have antioxidant effects, particularly Vitamin C and E, and Beta Carotene, as well as the Minerals,  Zinc and Selenium.

  Currently, our knowledge is greatest about the antioxidant effects of vitamins C and E and of beta carotene. These three micronutrients are found in different parts of the cell; which nutrient is active depends on where a free radicals attacks. For example, vitamin E is fat-soluable ( dissolves in fat) and is found primarily in cells membranes; it may act most prominently as an antioxidant if damage occurs in the cell membrane. The  water-soluable vitamin c is found in the cytoplasm of the cell and may play  a more important antioxidant role if a free radical is inside the watery confines of the cell.

  Despite their different locations in the cell, antioxidants operate in similar ways. When they encounter a free radical, with its unpaired or missing electron, they give up one of their own electrons to the free radical. Once  its electron is paired, the free radical is “quenched” – that is, it is no longer reactive or toxic.

Why doesn’t the vitamin itself become a free radicals?

  It does, in fact, but is structure is much more stable, so it is neither toxic non reactive.  Interestingly, antioxidants have been found to interact with each other.When vitamin E gives up its electron to free radical, the vitamin becomes oxidized. Vitamin C can then interact with the modified vitamin E and return it to its original state. This vitamin interaction helps maintain the balance between free radicals and antioxidants.

  In summation, our bodies break down the food that we consume into the nutrients that supply energy. This energy fuel the many cellular functions necessary to sustain life. metabolism – the process of energy consumption and utilization – involves a series of reactions using oxygen. These oxidative reactions create byproducts, known as free radicals, which are highly reactive, toxic molecules with unpaired electrons.  In some cases, free radicals defend the body against infection: in others, they cause cellular damage. Substances known as antioxidants help the body come with this potential for cellular damage.  Antioxidants, more notably Vitamin C and E and carotene  give up electrons to render free radicals harmless.

Antioxidants and Chronic disease.

Scientists believe that free radicals contribute to the development of some important medical problems and chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke), cancer. To appreciate how antioxidants may prevent or delay disease, it’s important to explore the role of free radicals in these areas.

Antioxidants may play an important role in preventing disease as I mentioned  heart disease as well  stroke, cancer and many types of disease.

Forever Living Products company:

-has different types of nutritional supplements which are including contains antioxidants, vitamins and minerals of a best sources of herbs, vegetables and fruits. In order to greater effect we reach, need to  consume each of three different  types supplements: antioxidants, vitamins, nutrition.

Forever Living Antioxidants products:
LYCIUM PLUS, ECHINACEA SUPREME,  VISON, GINKGO PLUS, GARLIC-THYME, VISON, A-BETA-CARE

Forever Living Minerals products:
NATURE MIN, FIELDS OF GREENS, CALCIUM

Forever Living Vitamins:
NATURE’S 18, KIDS VITAMIN,  B12 PLUS,  A-BETA-CARE,  ABSORBENT C

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These items are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.