Food, Health

What are Free Radicals and Antioxidants?

Need antioxidants and free radicals explained? Let’s discuss what antioxidants do to free radicals and how apple cider vinegar is an antioxidant and can help fight free radicals in the body.

What are free radicals?

Free radicals are unstable atoms that can result in damage to cells, causing ageing and illnesses. Without antioxidants, free radicals can very quickly cause harm to your body resulting in cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many other conditions.

As your body ages, it starts to lose its ability to fight any effects of free radicals. The more free radicals that your body has, the more it will come under stress.

Examples of free radicals

– Air pollution

– Alcohol

– Poor nutrition

– Smoking

– Sunlight (UV radiation)

What are antioxidants and how do they reduce free radicals?

If you’re wondering what antioxidants do, they are molecules in your body that are there to fight damaging free radicals. It’s important to maintain an antioxidant-rich diet to prevent an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants.

Your body’s antioxidants neutralise the free radicals by sacrificing a number of their electrons. By doing this, they ‘switch off’ the free radicals, breaking the chain reaction that affects other molecules and cells in the body.

What happens if free radicals outnumber antioxidants?

‘Oxidative stress’ is caused by oxygen molecules splitting into single atoms left with unpaired atoms, forming unstable free radicals. If free radicals outnumber the antioxidants in your body it results in oxidative stress. This then leads to cell damage resulting in symptoms of ageing.

What else can oxidative stress cause?

– Dementia

– Cardiovascular diseases

– Cancer and other autoimmune diseases

– Parkinsons

– Diabetes

– Cataracts

– Loss of skin elasticity, hair loss and wrinkles

How to avoid excessive free radical formation & oxidative stress

To avoid oxidative stress from happening, there are several environmental, lifestyle and stress factors to steer clear from:

1. Bacterial, viral or fungal infections

2. Cigarettes (using or being around the smoke from them)

3. High blood sugar levels

Antioxidant rich foods to incorporate into your diet

Apple cider vinegar is packed with antioxidants, called polyphenols, which are key in protecting your body from having too many damaging free radicals, leading to oxidative stress.

We suggest adding Willy’s ACV into your meals as a taste enhancer, mixing it with your smoothies, or even taking a shot of our ACV every morning straight after you wake up.

We recommend mixing 2 teaspoons of our organic apple cider vinegar into a small glass of water and drinking that every morning, or alternatively, you can have one of our ready-to-go shots!

Why not give our 60-day challenge a go? A 50ml shot of our ACV + turmeric, black pepper & raw honey is a perfect way to start your day. Great anti-inflammatory properties are found in the curcuminoids in turmeric.