Stay Healthy With Antioxidants

Protect your body by eating fruits and veggies.

The reason fruits and vegetables are so important to your overall health is that they are major purveyors of antioxidants.

Antioxidant molecules are like the missile defense system of your body, preventing damage from molecular bombs called free radicals. It works like this: In order to breathe, move, or eat, your body's cells convert food and oxygen into energy. This chemical reaction releases harmful byproducts, the free radicals we mentioned. Basically, they're highly reactive forms of oxygen that are missing an electron. Desperate for that missing electron, they steal them from normal cells, damaging the healthy cell and its DNA in the process. This damage eventually contributes to any number of major health problems, including heart disease, memory loss, and cancer.

Antioxidants, however, interfere with this process by giving free radicals one of their own electrons to stabilize them. Or they combine with free radicals to form different, more stable compounds. There are also antioxidant enzymes that help free radicals react with other chemicals to produce safe, instead of toxic, substances. Antioxidants, for instance, help prevent "bad" LDL cholesterol from becoming stickier and forming plaque.

This is the reason the health establishment is so insistent on people eating more fresh produce: It provides around-the-clock defenses against free-radical damage to your arteries.

From Stealth Health

 

• Healthy Foods
• • Heart-Healthy Food
• • Anti-Aging
• Winter Health Guide

• The Power of Antioxidants and Tea
• Lower cholesterol can be found in a cup.
• 
• Hearty and Satisfying Meatless Meals
• Give up meat without eating like a bunny.
• 
• Chocolate's Secret Health Benefits
• Who knew antioxidants could taste so good?
• 
• Easy Ways to Add Fruit Into Your Day
• Make sure you get enough fruit in your diet.
• 
• Sneaking Veggies Into Your Daily Diet
• Painless ways to increase veggies in your life
• 
• Foods That Fight Disease
• Food can do much more than taste good; it can help you fight many serious diseases.
• 

“ Stuck inside? Walk on your treadmill or, if you don't have one, do arm circles or march in place during TV commercials. ”

• See All Tips

• Be Inspired
• 10 Celebrities Who Give Back
• 7 Amazing Stories, $700,000 to Charity
• Virginia Cervasio: Making It Matter
• PLUS:
• Quiz: What's Your Celebrity Cause IQ?

One of my most difficult tasks as a flight attendant is to enforce rules while keeping customers happy. The electronic equipment that comes on board creates the greatest challenge. I walk the aisle asking passengers to turn off computers, electronic games and cell phones, which can create interference in communications between the pilot and the air traffic control tower. During one landing, a man persistently kept his cell phone at his ear. I confronted him and said, "Sir, you cannot talk on your phone until we reach the gate." "I am not talking," he replied. "I'm listening."

-- Mary E. Olthoff