Natural Antioxidants: Clearing the Controversy
Copyright 2006 Nabil Khoury
Clearing the controversy of natural antioxidants.
Contrary to what people believe, free radicals are not always
harmful to your body, but also benefit it in some ways. Free
radicals (which are unstable oxygen forms), when present in the
desired quantities, help to fight infections in your body and
also decrease the amounts of cancer cells in your body, It is
only when the free radicals get out of control, start
multiplying and are present in very high quantities in your
body, that they start to harm it.
High levels of free radicals can lead to atherosclerosis,
osteoarthritis, hepatitis, cirrhosis of the liver and even
cancer. Thus, it is imperative to control the presence of free
radicals in the body, which is where antioxidants come in.
Antioxidants are nutrients that help to lower the amounts of
free radicals in your body by providing them with the oxygen
molecule that they are missing and making them stable. There are
five main kinds of natural antioxidants, which are:
* Vitamin C
* Vitamin E
* Coenzyme Q 10
*
Lipoic acid
* Gluthatione
Together, these 5 antioxidants make up the network of natural
antioxidants. Although each of these antioxidants has its
respective benefits individually, their best and safest use is
when they are used in combination with one another.
Here, I need to elaborate on the use of the network of natural
antioxidants. It is the belief of many people, and some recent
medical studies have also supported this belief, that using
natural antioxidants can be very dangerous as the natural
antioxidants have serious side effects which can increase your
risk of health problems. However, what most people do not
understand is that the problem does not lie with the natural
antioxidants per-se, but in how they are used by people.
When people do not consult natural health care practitioners and
use the natural antioxidants on their own, they typically take
only one or two of the natural antioxidants depending on what
specific benefits they are trying to achieve. If you take a high
dose of any particular natural antioxidant without taking proper
doses of the others, this is when the problems start and the
antioxidants begin to harm you instead of benefiting you.
But, if you consult a natural health expert and then take the
appropriate combination of the network of natural antioxidants,
instead of taking high dose of only one antioxidant, then you
will see that they do not harm your body but give you tremendous
benefits, including protecting your body from serious illnesses
and delaying the aging process.