Health & Wellbeing

Overwhelming evidence now indicates that antioxidants play a critical role in wellness, health maintenance, and the prevention of chronic and degenerative diseases. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals - highly reactive chemicals generated during normal metabolism and during exposure to environmental insult. Free radicals play a role in most major health problems of the industrialised world, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and ageing

 

Free radicals constantly form in almost every cell of the body at an astonishing rate. Many aspects of the daily environment, from sunlight to smoking to smog, cause freer radical transformation. Ut free radicals also form during the =normal metabolism of food. Free radicals react vigorously with almost anything in the cell, and contribute to many types of disease. For example, if their targets are DNA, the likelihood of cancer increases. If the target is low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in the blood, the likelihood of arthrosclerosis and its consequences (heart attack and stroke) increases.

 

Recent evidence, both from the laboratory and from human population studies, make it clear that in creasing levels of antioxidants in the direct lead to predictable, increasing levels of protection against such diseases as cancer and heart disease. In New Zealand our young soils are among the most trace element deficient in the world, in particular, iodine, cobalt, selenium, zinc and manganese. This means our daily intake of these antioxidants is also one of the lowest in the world. New Zealand also has an alarmingly high incidence of the many chronic and degenerative diseases shown to be linked to low levels of antioxidants in the blood.

 

Our bodies have evolved various antioxidant defense mechanisms that combat the constant barrage of free radicals. Some antioxidants are quite familiar as vitamins or vitamin-forming compounds: Vitamin E the carotenoids, including beta-carotene, and selenium, these antioxidants must be constantly replenished through the diet. Each of these antioxidants has a specific area in which it is most effective at neutralizing free radicals.

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