Common Sense Eating & Exercise

Understanding Healthy Longevity

What is all the fuss about Free Radicals?

vegiesandfreeradicals 
 

Learn Why Fruits, Veg­eta­bles and Water are More Then Just A Lit­tle Important

You hear about them on TV. You read about them in mag­a­zines and papers. Every­where you go, you will see Free Rad­i­cals men­tioned some­where dur­ing the day.  There is a war going on and the ter­ror­ist are in your body.  Are you start­ing to become con­cerned  about your wrin­kles or have age spots become a new con­cern.  These seem­ingly benign prob­lems are signs of how well your war is going with Free Rad­i­cals.  Free Rad­i­cals are the pri­mary cause of aging and they must be neu­tral­ized. What are these lit­tle crit­ters and why are they so dangerous?

What are Free Radicals?

Hold on and pay atten­tion, and we can get through this painlessly.

Sci­en­tific Definition

The Sci­en­tific Def­i­n­i­tion of a Free Rad­i­cal is an unsta­ble mol­e­cule that has dropped an elec­tron.
When this occurs, the mol­e­cule becomes highly reac­tive and  becomes a “Reac­tive Oxy­gen Species” (ROS) or a “Reac­tive Nitro­gen Species” (RNS).  All atoms con­tain two or more elec­trons cir­cling around the nucleus, which con­sist of pro­tons and neu­trons.  All atoms we cur­rently know of have an inner and outer shell. The inner shell will always have two elec­trons and the elec­trons con­tained in the outer shell will vary but will always vary by twos.  The excep­tion to this is Hydro­gen, which is a sta­ble atom with a sin­gle shell that con­tains a sin­gle elec­tron and a nucleus con­tain­ing a sin­gle pro­ton.  This makes Hydro­gen our most potent Antiox­i­dant.   We will learn more about why later.

Now remem­ber the com­par­i­son between cells, mol­e­cules and atoms, all things are made up of atoms includ­ing the air you breathe.  There is no such thing as noth­ing,  it is just a mat­ter of what we are able to detect

Mol­e­cules are formed in the body by two or more atoms and bound by elec­tron pairs. When the mol­e­cule is split for any num­ber of rea­sons, it some­times drops an elec­tron. It might not split but sim­ply lose an elec­tron dur­ing meta­bolic or envi­ron­men­tal stresses.  This is where the prob­lem begins.

Oxygen Molecule
Oxy­gen Molecule
 

What causes Free Radicals?

Overeat­ing is the largest cause of Free Radicals.

 Free Rad­i­cals are pri­mar­ily  the pol­lu­tion the body pro­duces as it gen­er­ates energy. Free rad­i­cals are the fumes com­ing out of the tail pipe.  Note in the pic­ture  below the size  we are dis­cussing here and under­stand the 5 sec­ond rule when you drop food on the ground does not apply to real food safety.  Free Rad­i­cals kill you slowly and their affect on the body is cumu­la­tive.  This is not a maybe .  The bet­ter the qual­ity of the fuel (your diet) going in, the bet­ter your emis­sions will be leav­ing the tailpipe. To under­stand this, we need to take a lit­tle detour to dis­cuss these lit­tle dis­cussed power plants inside every cell called Mitochondria.
 free-radicals1
  1. Mito­chon­dria is a organ­ism within the cell that pro­vides the cell with energy, which oper­at­ing in uni­son sup­ply the body with 90 to 95% of its power 
  2. Mito­chon­dria has it’s own genome(DNA) and exist out­side of the nucleus of the cell
  3. The DNA of Mito­chon­dria is passed from the mother only
  4. The DNA of Mito­chon­dria is longer then Nuclear DNA (you know the DNA with the 23 pair of chro­mo­somes in the cen­ter of the cell) and used by the cell also in sig­nal­ing, cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, cell death, as well as the con­trol of the cell cycle and cell growth
  5. Mito­chon­dria is linked to the aging process, but we don’t know how out­side of CellularRespiration
  6. The num­ber of Mito­chon­dria in each cell varies from one to sev­eral thou­sand depend­ing on what the cell does
  7. Mito­chon­dria is extremely sus­cep­ti­ble to Free Rad­i­cals and because there can be sev­eral in a cell, the DNA in them can mutate indi­vid­u­ally.  When the mutated bal­ance of Mito­chon­dria is too large, dis­ease fol­lows.  This is why Fat Sol­u­ble Antiox­i­dants are impor­tant because they are able to pen­e­trate the cell mem­brane and neu­tral­ize these crit­ters as they occur

Mito­chon­dria pro­duce energy through what has been termed the mito­chon­dr­ial elec­tron trans­port chain. The energy gen­er­a­tion process is called Cel­lu­lar Res­pi­ra­tion. The mito­chon­drion pro­duce bio chem­i­cal energy in the body called  ATP (adeno­sine triphos­phate).  This is accom­plished by Hydro­gen mov­ing elec­trons along the mito­chon­dr­ial elec­tron trans­port chain.  The elec­trons then meet up with oxy­gen at the end of this train.  How much energy is pro­duced is depen­dent on the sup­ply of oxy­gen. ATP is also known as the “Uni­ver­sal Cur­rency of Life”.  If it has life as we define it. It cre­ates ATP to live.  For those seek­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion, I have linked an old Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can report on Mito­chon­dria.  The Infor­ma­tion on Vit­a­min C & E is some­what dated, but it will show the reader how con­fused the med­ical estab­lish­ment really is.  Instead of truly under­stand­ing the wis­dom of those before us on the par­ti­cle level and how our veg­eta­bles, fruits and herbs work within the body, they are miss­ing the whole point and try­ing to rein­vent the wheel .  The idea is to live a life where you don’t get sick and the med­ical estab­lish­ment isn’t inter­ested in it if you can’t patent it and sell it. 

AAIN has found the wheel and has given it to you in 4 prin­ci­ples.  Now we will con­tinue to give you the spokes that keep it spin­ning nice and true.

Herein lies the ulti­mate para­dox.   Oxy­gen is the source of all life and the major cause of aging. Oxygenation and Oxidation

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