Antioxidants | A Metabolic Plan

Inflammation – The Silent Killer

Filed under: health and nutrition; Tagged as: Antioxidant Level, antioxidants, blueberries, free radicals, Fruits And Vegetables, green tea, heart disease, natural diet, nutrition, ORAC, Orac Rating, Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, Reduce Inflammation

Several years ago this heading was on the cover of Time Magazine. The article was about how heart disease, Parkinson’s and cancer and many other diseases are caused by inflammation. Antioxidants reduce inflammation and protect cells from damage which obviously lowers the risk of these diseases and improves the immune system.

So how do you measure how many antioxidants you’re getting? There is a measurement of a food’s antioxidant level we call ORAC which stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. So the higher the ORAC rating, the more “free radicals” and therefore, inflammation a food can fight. However, keep in mind, a food’s ORAC and it’s ability to fight free radicals can change based on whether the food is cooked, dried or raw.

What foods are high in antioxidants? People often think first of fruits and vegetables. That’s true, they are, especially fruit such as blueberries, strawberries, broccoli, spinach (notice they are all dark colored ). However, nuts, especially pecans and beans, primarily the dark colored ones (pinto, red, kidney) are all great sources of antioxidants as well as many herbs and spices. As far as beverages, green tea and pomegranate juice are both in the spotlight as studies are showing their potential benefits in protecting against many diseases.

While being aware of what ORAC means is good information, more important is to eat a widely varied natural diet, remembering that we were meant to be hunters and gatherers. If you choose your diet based on that, you’ll most likely get the nutrients your body needs and combat the free radicals you’re being bombarded with on a daily basis.

Keep in mind that it must be a varied diet as all antioxidants are not the same – they combat different types of free radicals in the body. So if you just loaded up with spinach, you would miss out on the enormous benefits of something like curcumin. Recent studies show that curcumin has enormous anti-inflammatory capabilities and may even be able to suppress cancer at various stages. In fact, there are ongoing studies on curcumin and it’s potential affect on atherosclerosis, high cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease. These are exciting studies and may give us a natural way to combat some of the most deadly diseases we face.

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What’s All The Buzz About Antioxidants?

Filed under: health and nutrition; Tagged as: Anti Oxidants, antioxidants, Diets, Exercise, free radicals, health, Natural Fruits, nutrition, Nuts, Oxidation Process

It seems like everywhere we look, people are talking about antioxidants and how many are in their product. So what do we need them for?

Ever heard of “free radicals”? Our bodies are bombarded with them all day everyday. Free radicals are caused by the oxidative process. We see this process in things like iron which rusts – that’s oxidation. It’s caused when a molecule has an unpaired electron. This happens in our bodies also. It’s an oxidation process that leaves a molecule unbalanced – it only has one electron. Enter anti-oxidants. Antioxidants pair up with the single electron and repair the damage to that molecule. That’s great you say – so just eat and drink a lot of food with antioxidants.

It’s been said that standing on a street corner when a bus passes by exposes you to more “free radicals” in that 30 seconds than our ancestors encountered in a lifetime. They were eating diets loaded with natural fruits and nuts that hadn’t been processed and loaded up with fats, salts and sugars. In other words their diets were far superior to ours AND they also got much more exercise than most of us do.

Wow! That’s a lot of free radicals to counteract. We actually get hit with about 10 QUINTILLION per day. Every day. Sounds like we have our work cut out for us. So let’s get started.