The older you get, the more you should care about the Free Radical Theory of Aging . If you’ve never heard of free radicals, I can assure you that they are not politically motivated, but are quite distructive never the less. Free radicals  are unstable or damaged molecules that will steal an electron from another nearby molecule in order to restablize themselves. But, when they do that they make a new unstable molecule and the cycle repeats – creating a chain reaction that damages the organ systems in your body as deep as the cellular level.

Just check out the wrinkles on a 50+ sunbather if you doubt the impact of cellular damage on aging . with the skin we can see a visible change . We cannot see the brain, liver or heart .  But arteries get stopped – with cellular junk – and joints turn swollen with chronic inflammation- which is directly caused by free radicals.

But at least there is some help. Antioxidants are nature’s answer to free radicals . Antioxidants are molecules that are capable of donating an electron to a free radical without becoming unstable themselves. They halt the chain reaction and prevent the damage.

But,  where do free radicals come from ? There are two main sources of free radicals – one source is the outside environment – think of pollution and cigarette smoke and all the chemicals and toxins we regularly ingest . The other source of free radicals is us .   There are four separate ways that our bodies make free radicals – oxidants.

Daily metabolism – I’ll keep the long scientific words out of this account because they’re just too hard to spell. But let’s just say that our body, uses oxygen as fuel and converts it to water. In the process, the oxygen molecule is not completely and cleanly utilised. There are by-products called oxy-radicals- our own version of nuclear waste- So that’s one – huge source of free radicals.

Oxidants are not all bad, we use them to fight chronic infections, bacteria and parasites. Unfortunately, nearby cells are exposed to free radical damage . Too bad that we can get burned when we fight fire with fire . We also produce hydrogen peroxide- another free radical version of oxygen – when we metabolize some fatty acids.

These processes go on every day and are happening in millions of cells at once . It’s not surprising that antioxidant supplements are so popular and a great piece of news that our body also produces some superb antioxidants like glutathione and CoEnzymeQ10 to help us deal with them.

In a final irony , an enzyme called cytochrome P450 is used by our bodies to defend against toxins like drugs, other foreign chemicals and pesticides. In the process of creating this enzyme, our body will also produce free radicals. In a way, this makes the external toxins doubly damaging.

If you’re interested in helping your body combat the aging effects of free radicals, you need to support your supply of antioxidants. Some antioxidants, like Vitamins C and E can be supplemented and unquestionably a healthy diet is very important. Other antioxidants like Glutathione cannot be supplied as an oral  supplement although you can provide your body with the precursors -raw materials- to produce it yourself. One such product is Cellgevity, the Glutathione precursor from Max International.