How Antiaging Antioxidants Add Life to Our Years

We need antiaging antioxidants in our diet because they help us combat the abnormal effects of aging.

Everyone needs these nutrients in their food, but given the accelerated aging process associated with diabetes, arthritis, and other lifestyle related illnesses, this is a must for every earth-dweller today.

Health professionals continue advise us to do all of the following in order to slow the aging process. They tell us to
-- take more vitamin supplements
-- eat more antiaging foods
-- use lots of antiaging antioxidants, and
-- exercise self-control (or moderation) in our eating

All this is good advice, but what does all this mean? What are antiaging antioxidants anyway?

Antiaging antioxidants are nutrients that are supposed to help us age gracefully. Let me illustrate:

Consider the difference between not being able to walk upstairs without help when you are 70 years old and being fit to run a marathon when you are in your eighties!

Aging is natural and inevitable. We all know that. As long as there is time, we will grow older. You and I have this elusive wish - to be healthy as long as possible... until death should we part with our health.

But more and more of us are getting diabetes and other lifestyle conditions every year. And while the numbers of new drugs and medical breakthroughs are increasing, new diseases, and the growing cost of health care, are present at the same time.

Antiaging antioxidants in our food

Aging, we must. But whenever the signs, symptoms, and effects of aging precede that number (we call our age) we have cause for concern.

Plant-based foods, namely fresh fruits and vegetables have more than carbohydrates, water, and fiber. They contain hundreds of other chemicals called phytochemicals. Most phytochemicals are antioxidants.

Recently, scientists have been discovering these antiaging antioxidants and finding them to have healing and preventive properties.

The question many people will be asking is, "Can I get these phytochemicals as health supplements?"

How to use the antiaging antioxidants in foods

While scientists have been able to isolate some of these phytochemicals, experiments also show that they are more effective when used as nature prepared them.

For example, experiments with vitamin C supplements show that they are marginally effective compared to the vitamin C you get from eating an orange. I learned that a 500 mg vitamin C tablet is less effective than an orange with 50 mg of vitamin C.

Why?

Because of the phytochemicals that enhance the body's absorption and use of the major nutrients (in this case, vitamin C). Those phytochemicals are not in synthetic vitamins.

Phytochemicals come from plant sources. Antioxidants generally refer to molecules that "eat up" free radicals. Let me explain this.

Why are antioxidants anti-aging?

Antioxidants help to dispose of, or neutralize, free radicals that may otherwise destroy normal body tissues.

These free radicals can be considered as "molecular forms" that are hungry for electrons. They snatch these electrons from normal cells (in body tissues such as blood vessels) and damage them.

Their destructive action in the body accelerates the rate at which we age. Antioxidants are able to safely "diffuse" or neutralize these free radicals and render them harmless.

The anti-diabetes diet is naturally anti-aging

I have explained the concept of the anti-diabetes diet. Consisting mainly of items from the four lowest levels of the healing foods pyramid and the healthy eating pyramid, we use mainly whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds and nuts.

This, essentially was the original diet designed for humans - and it still is the best.

The items in the anti-diabetes diet, such as fruits and vegetables, are antiaging antioxidants and will help us fight lifestyle diseases and live longer, healthier lives.

This has been proven time and time again. The diet of the healthiest and longest livers, according to the November 2005 issue of National Geographic magazine, is largely the anti-diabetes diet.

Get on the anti-diabetes diet today and add life to your years, and most likely, you will also add years to your life.

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