Oxidative Stress and Its Aging Effect

By Paige Gimbal

During the last 20 years, antioxidants have become a household term in regards to health and wellness. This is due largely to our understanding of free radicals and the primary role they play in inflicting damage to our cells, tissues, and organs. This damage is often referred to as oxidative stress and it’s a big deal!

Perhaps it may surprise you that our everyday activities can cause oxidative stress. Pollutants in the air we breathe, the foods we eat, mental stress, and even exercise can create substantial numbers of havoc-wreaking free radicals. Through time, unchecked oxidative stress simply wreaks havoc within the body and accelerates the process we call aging.

Aging in the human body refers to the slow progression of oxidative stress. And just as we don’t see wrinkles appear overnight, neither do we see the progression of oxidative stress until it manifests itself in the way of degenerative diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dozens of other diseases.

When it comes to aging and living longer, many in the United States and the Westernized world love to boast that we are living longer than ever before. But a disturbing element of this trend of living longer is that we’re not living more years of a productive, enjoyable life. Instead, we’re simply better at keeping sick people alive. We are getting sick earlier and more often and the development of certain drugs and surgeries has allowed us to delay the inevitable. In short, we are dying a longer, slower death.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, vice chair and professor of surgery at Columbia University says: "Aging is really not about preventing disease; getting rid of heart disease and cancer gains us less than a decade of life. Rather we need to slow the rate of aging to avoid the frailty that would make longevity less desirable.”

A few decades ago, health experts and marketing gurus began leading us to believe that the best way to fight oxidative stress is by consuming products high in antioxidants, such as vitamins C, E, and A. The results … the birth of a multibillion dollar industry that now comprises supposed antioxidant-rich juices, supplements, and even sodas that line store shelves and populate the pages of health catalogs.

But do these antioxidant products truly help the body fight oxidative stress? With more and more research mounting, the answer is “not really” and here is why. “Direct” antioxidants such as vitamin C work to neutralize free radicals in a one-to-one relationship. That is, each vitamin C molecule in your body that encounters a free-radical molecule is able to stabilize and neutralize that free-radical molecule. The problem here is that once that happens, the vitamin C molecule is now useless. It can’t neutralize any more free-radical molecules.

The "direct" one-to-one process is insufficient to stem the onslaught of free radicals present in our bodies every day! In fact, you would need to consume the antioxidants found in 375 oranges or 87 glasses of red wine or 120 vitamin C tablets (500mg) or 12 pounds of blueberries each day to eliminate our daily load of free radicals.

Research now shows that the most effective way to neutralize free radicals and protect from oxidative damage is to trigger the body’s production of its own free radical–fighting enzymes. The body produces several antioxidant enzymes, with superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and glutathione peroxidase being some of the most important. These superpotent antioxidant enzymes can eliminate up to 1 million free radical molecules per second, every second, without being consumed in the process.

Our bodies already contain the information for how to combat stressful situations, such as oxidative stress and chronic inflammation. That information is stored in our genes. The secret lies in being able to signal our genes to increase production of these antioxidant enzymes that fight off free radical damage and ultimately reduce our levels of oxidative stress.

You might be asking yourself how you can increase or improve the production of your body’s antioxidant enzymes. That’s a great question. And the answer is multifaceted. For instance, you can eat certain foods (such as broccoli, onions, and brussels sprouts) that are known to boost the production of these substances. Exercising also helps. Certain plants are especially effective at stimulating the body’s production of these antioxidant powerhouses (such as ashwagandha, bacopa, green tea extract, turmeric root, and milk thistle.) These botanicals, used through the millennia in numerous cultures throughout the world, are widely studied and accepted as safe and effective.

Most people will exercise, take vitamins and supplements, diet, and take prescription medications because they truly want to stay healthy or because they fear for their health and mortality. But the truth is, when it comes to being able to slow the tide of oxidative stress that most of us are burdened with day in and day out, we need to be looking at ways to stimulate production of the body’s own powerful antioxidant enzymes.