Free Radicals vs Antioxidants: The Internal Battle Over Your Skin That You Can Win
Even though free radicals sound kind of cool they are actually pretty damaging to you. These unstable atoms (think back to your chemistry classes) have the ability to damage your cells and cause illness and aging. Antioxidants, on the other hand, with their less exciting name, are the good molecules. They are attracted to these free radicals, keeping them from doing damage to your body and your skin.
Of course the entire process is much more detailed and complex than this, happening at a microscopic level all over your body, all of the time. It’s almost as though the free radicals and antioxidants are locked in an ongoing battle over you. This is not a battle you want the free radicals to win. So adapting your lifestyle and skincare routine to assure that you are providing your body with sufficient sources of antioxidants to keep the free radicals at bay, should be one of the things you focus on.
Free Radicals: What they Do To You
The Free Radical Theory of Aging, as described in Medical News Today, is supported by a significant amount of scientific research. In a nutshell:
As the body ages, it loses its ability to fight the effects of free radicals. The result is more free radicals, more oxidative stress, and more damage to cells, which leads to degenerative processes, as well as “normal” aging. Various studies and theories have connected oxidative stress due to free radicals to… age-related changes in appearance, such as loss of skin elasticity, wrinkles, graying hair, hair loss, and changes in hair texture, etc.
Research on rats suggests that free radicals produced in the mitochondria damage the substances that the cell needs to work properly. This damage causes mutations that produce more free radicals, thus accelerating the process of damage to the cell.
This theory helps explain aging, since aging accelerates over time. The gradual, but increasingly rapid buildup of free radicals offers one explanation for why even healthy bodies age and deteriorate over time…. Free radical theories of aging and disease may help explain why some people age more slowly than others. Although free radicals are produced naturally in the body, lifestyle factors can accelerate their production.
Lifestyle and environmental factors that can cause oxidative stress, impacting the skin and causing premature signs of aging include: smoking, overconsumption of alcohol, exposure to air pollution and certain foods. Combating this is as easy as bringing antioxidants into your body.
These chemicals, which work to prevent or decrease the oxidation impact of free radicals, do so by donating an electron to them. This creates a stabilizing effect. Which antioxidants work varies depending on which free radical is in your body. However, generally speaking, consuming antioxidants and applying them to your skin in the form of a cream that contains the molecules needed to assist absorption, are the two best ways to keep yourself from suffering at the hands of the free radicals.
Best Antioxidants to Eat and Drink for Your Skin
There are a lot of foods that contain antioxidants, but since you need a variety of them to fight off the different types of free radicals that may be attacking your body, the best approach to take on this front is probably to eat as diverse of a diet as possible. This is frequently referred to as a “rainbow diet,” because it contains a significant amount of different colors of fresh fruits and vegetables. Examples include antioxidant rich ‘superfoods’ like:
Blackberries
Pecans
Blueberries
Artichoke Hearts
There are also drinks that are high in antioxidants like:
Green Tea
White Tea
Red Wine
Dark Hot Chocolate
In terms of the drinks, obviously too much of any of them can be detrimental and there is another way to get benefits other than consumption: topical application. This is true, at least in the case of the green and the white tea.
Best Antioxidant Skin Cream
SABRINA Collagen Rx Plus contains the teas that have the most powerful antioxidants in them. It also contains collagen, which thanks to a patented nanotechnology process can be delivered directly into your skin, and stem cells from Swiss green apples. These ingredients work together to help you win the fight against free radicals and to counter the effects they have on the aging process. This will help you have a ‘successful aging’ paradigm which focuses on health and active participation in life, counters traditional conceptualizations of aging as a time of disease and is increasingly equated with minimizing age signs on the skin, face and body. (Source). As demonstrated in a laboratory environment, the topical effects of teas is quite remarkable as an anti-wrinkle compound. Using this unique formula is thus one of the best opportunities you have available to you, alongside eating well, to stay looking young and beautiful.