Do you know what is antioxidant? What is
the importance of antioxidant in our life? How is it essential to our body?
An antioxidant is a type of
molecule that inhibits the oxidation of other molecules in our body.
What is the meaning by oxidation? Why is
it a harm to our body ?
Oxidation is a chemical
reaction that transfers electrons of hydrogen from a substance to an oxidizing
agents. This reaction produce free radicals which would start a chain reaction
in cell and causes damage or death to
the cell. Remember that, our body are
totally make of CELLS! You can surely imagine what would happen and what
are the bad effects to our body when our cells are getting damage and death.
Therefore, antioxidants are important to
maintain our body health because they terminate these chain reactions by
removing free radical intermediates, and inhibit other oxidation reactions.
How they are able to do this? They do
this by being oxidized themselves! Hence, antioxidants are often reducing
agents such ascorbic acid, thiols or polyphenols.
Insufficient levels
of antioxidants will cause oxidative stress and may damage or kill cells.
Oxidative stress is suggested as
the root cause of aging and various
human diseases like atherosclerosis, stroke, diabetes, cancer and
neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinsonism.
