What the heck is an antioxidant!?

Hello everyone!

In today’s health and wellness , you hear a lot about antioxidants being good for you. You go into a smoothie shop and read the ingredients for the Morning Sunrise smoothie . It says it is “loaded with antioxidants”. Sure you’ll go ahead and order it since it seems like it’s probably the best thing for your body.

But what exactly is an anti-oxidant!?

Well first of all, what does “anti” mean? Anti usually means to act against something. To counter-act. Do the opposite. “Oxidize” is the process of interacting with oxygen or to combine with oxygen. Look up oxidize or oxidation under Google or a dictionary.

Therefore, antioxidant means to counter act against the oxidation process.

Here’s an example:

You open a banana or cut an apple. You leave it open for awhile and the color of the fruits begin to turn brown. That is the result of oxidation. That is basically what the skin is for; which is, to protect the fruit from being oxidized. When something is oxidized, damage occurs.

Taken from Wikepedia:

“An antioxidant is a molecule capable of inhibiting the oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation is a chemical reaction that transfers electrons from a substance to an oxidizing agent. Oxidation reactions can produce free radicals. In turn, these radicals can start chain reactions that damage cells. Antioxidants terminate these chain reactions by removing free radical intermediates, and inhibit other oxidation reactions.”

So when you hear that there are antioxidants in your food or vitamins, the antioxidants will help you fight against/prevent damage from free radicals.

“Free radicals, also known simply as radicals, are organic molecules responsible for aging, tissue damage, and possibly some diseases. These molecules are very unstable, therefore they look to bond with other molecules, destroying their vigor and perpetuating the detrimental process. Antioxidants, present in many foods, are molecules that prevent free radicals from harming healthy tissue.” Here is a list that Adam, founder of SuperFood Snacks, put together to get an understanding of the levels of some foods that are considered high in antioxidants. Cranberries               —————————-8,272 Blueberries               ————————- 5,660 Blackberries              ———————— 5,374 Rasberries                ———————– 4,609 Almonds                  ———————- 4,053 Red Wine                 ——————– 3,373 Incan Berry              ——————- 3,032 Goji Berries              —————— 2,994 Apples                     —————– 2,775 Pomegranate Juice    —————- 2,440 Oranges                   ————— 1,651 Spinach                   ————– 1,379 Green Tea                ————- 1,140 These results are based on 91 grams of each food. Results are courtesy of the Agricultural Research Service and the USDA.

That’s it for now everyone!!

My challenge for you is: Look in your kitchen to see what kinds of fruits and veggies that you have that are considered high in antioxidants? You will be surprised at what you find! =D

See ya later!!

Loving you all,

Cindy

Resources:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-free-radicals.htm

http://www.healthcastle.com/antioxidant.shtml

Living well is our primary world instinct..

To fully understand the human body one would have to read several books, take classes in human health, go to Medical school, talk to a personal trainer or nutritionist, talk to their doctor, be active in sports, seek a reiki healer, or suffer pain to learn how the human body functions through recovery. There are unlimited avenues to gaining knowledge. No matter where or how you seek information of the human body to stay in tip top health, I feel there are endless connections to new information being discovered every single day. We are ALWAYS striving for optimal health; and as we evolve through our modern life, the awareness of health and wellness is growing rapidly in our society. With modern western medicine, eastern medicine, integrative health, yoga, sports, improvement on organic agriculture, the growing of green practices in and around our cities, and with people waking up to the ideals of living healthy, I feel we are moving forward in a positive motion of overall wellness as a collective community.

(Pictured above: Yoga teacher Michael Carpenter assists a practitioner with a restorative healing pose. Taken by Cindy Manit at Hanuman Center, San Francisco)

For ages, humans have always been very open about sharing information on how to feel better and live better. The use of apple cider vinegar as a folk health tonic has been around since the 1950s (1). Yoga, developed in India about 5,000 years ago between 900 to 500 BCE (2), is now taking on its’ own trend in the Western world for health and wellness. If a friend finds that drinking coconut juice helps them with dehydration, they will share that information with others. Doctors as well have been passing down information on how to care for patients for hundreds of years, therefore we have Medical Schools.

The advancement of health and wellness never stops. It is ALWAYS developing and more people seem to be getting informed. Stem Cell research is a new technology that takes human cells and then are developed into other cell varietals in the human body which can hopefully cure some diseases (If someone would like to explain this better, you’re more than welcomed to). Organizations like The Water Project (3), are reaching out to places as Africa and India to promote and build better ways to providing clean water for better health. We are constantly seeing new health and wellness centers opening up, new power bars on store shelves, people getting certified in massage  therapy or yoga,  more organic food sections in grocery stores, and this trend is not going to stop.

Look back at our ancestors; about 1.9 million years ago, the homo erectus began cooking their food with fire. In theory, cooking food gave the homo erectus more energy without having to aggravate their digestive track nor chomp on poisonous foods all day, grow bigger brains, and created more time to convene in social gatherings which added to their wellness (4). I believe the cooking of food boosted the human evolution to where it is today.

So where am I going with this?

I wanted to bring the awareness to everyone that as humans, we are CONSTANTLY building waves of living better enriching lives and the core to that is through community building. I believe we are all here for the same reason on this planet, though have all different paths, but collectively we are supporting each other through health and wellness. This support is growing stronger and becoming more wide spread while we all become more educated and aware of the potential we have to being happy healthy humans. I am grateful for the wide advancements of our education, health practices, communication, and overall efforts of continued research to providing better lives for everyone.

We TRULY are UNITED as ONE. We need to support each other. I am definitely looking forward to the next five years of where our world community will be heading towards and how it will look. Perhaps in ten years there will be even more advancements in health research, and hopefully have discovered the ultimate cure for treating AIDS and cancer. I do believe that globally we are becoming more aware of our basic human needs, our values towards health, recovering destruction, helping those who are suffering, and understanding that we all just want to live happily. WE have been getting stronger and better as a species from the beginning of our time. Lets continue to share and live well together.

I do have one advice: Please do not criticize other people’s health practices. If it works…it works!!

My challenge for you is: Ask yourself in what way has your awareness grown and how it has made a positive shift in your life.

See ya!

Loving you all,

Cindy

Resources:

1. http://www.webmd.com/diet/apple-cider-vinegar

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga

3. http://thewaterproject.org/

4. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/06/invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues/