Your Vitamin Army

When I was a kid and I was sick, my mom would tell me to 'take my soldiers.'  She had this whole elaborate tale of how the medicine the doctor gave me was actually an army of soldiers who went in and fought with the bad guys in my sore throat, and when I got better that meant that they won the battle.  MAN did that work!  I was like, 'Gimme those soldiers!  Get the bad guys out of me!'  Panic-stricken, and not wanting to be any part of why the poor battling soldiers may not win, I always took my medicine.  So, this morning, when Ed said his throat wasn't feeling too great before work, I told him to take his soldiers.  Except I meant more along the lines of fruits and veggies, and their particular branch of the Good-Health Military - antioxidants.

Antioxidants are fab.  They are literally like kamikaze soldiers against whatever 'bad guy' is in your system, attacking it.  In this case, the bad guys are free radicals.  (Of course the body has other bad-guy beater-uppers, like your white blood cells; I'm just talking a-ox's here.) We all know that antioxidants are good and free radicals are bad, but why? 

First thing's first - free radicals.  Think back to high school chem for a minute.  (Stay with me here, it's easy.)  We know the whole body's made up of cells.  Our cells are made up of molecules, which are made up of even smaller particles called atoms, which are held together by different kinds of bonds.  Atoms really like being even stevens.  They love having an equal amount of protons (+) and electrons (-) so that they can float around, totally independent, no problems.  They float around, doing their thing, with electrons on their most outer parts.  Sometimes, a weak bond holding one of these outer-most electrons breaks.  The break in the bond can happen for lots of reasons - pollution, smoking, etc.  When this break happens, an electron gets lost, and all of a sudden the atom is freaking out because it's unevenly charged.  It's incomplete - and it doesn't like that one bit.  This is a free radical, and it be hungry for an electron so it can be evened out again.  (Can you predict the chain reaction coming?..)  The free radical bumps into the nearest stable molecule and swipes one of its electrons.  Then that previously-stable molecule becomes a free radical, and so on and so forth.  Little thiefs!

Cue our hero, the antioxidant.  Antioxidants, those brave little soldiers, jump in the way of the sticky-fingers free radical and lend one of their own electrons to the free radical-thief-guy.  "But wouldn't they become a free radical then?" Nope.  Antioxidants are mellow guys, they are stable with or without their extra electron. 

So now we understand why it's a good idea to maintain the antioxidant level in your body.  I loved how Steven Pratt put it in his awesome book Superfoods Rx, when he explained that a giant dose of 1000% of Vitamin C (as often found in popular supplements) really just don't work extra-better.  Our bodies can only process a certain amount of nutrients at one time, and we just pee out the rest.  Literally flushing money down the toilet there, people.  (Well, we pee out some extra amounts of some vitamins - some of them we actually can overdose on.  Which is why I - and most educated nutrition professionals - will recommend getting nutrients from foods, not pills.  It's tough to overdose on nutrients when they come from food sources. I'll say it again - some nutrients in foods are pairing up with other nutrients and chemicals naturally found in the same food source to make sure you're getting too much at once.)

Different vitamins help reduce different diseases and/or conditions.  It's best, as always, to 'eat across the [naturally-colored] rainbow' and enjoy a variety of fruits and veggies in all different colors, and hues of the same color, to give yourself the best chance at a complete micronutrient profile.  Superfoods Rx is a comprehensive, well-written, and research-based book if food-sources of vitamins interest you.  Read it! 

As Dr. Pratt suggests, sip or nibble antioxidants in steady amounts throughout the day instead of overwhelming your body all at once with giant (partially-unuseable doses).  He prefers Odwalla C Monster, I prefer watering down 100% Pomegranate juice (Like R.W. Knudsen or Pom) and taking small sips all day.  This way, there's a constant small-but-mighty amount of antioxidants floating around my system, ready to fight my battles for me.  (And this is the system I sent Ed off to work with today.)  Attention Losers-of-Weight: Please remember that fruit juice is often high in sugar and low in fiber, please water pure juice down and add low-cal sweetener if necessary.  Just saying.   

I hope this helps to clear up the Free Radical vs Antioxidant Phenomenon a bit.  Enjoy some reds and greens and yellows and even purples today, and report back.