One of the most talked about health and fitness supplements right now is antioxidant dietary supplements. Everybody already knows that fruits, vegetables, and vitamins were good for us, we are just starting to realize how helpful antioxidants are for a healthy body. This article is going to discuss what is an antioxidant and then how you can best supplement your diet.
Free radicals float around your body and cause damage to your cells. I won’t get into more details, but if you want to know more, head over to Wikipedia and you can get a lot of good information. Ok, so we have established that there are things called free radicals in your body and they are not good for you. Now, let’s look at how we can fix that.
The key to neutralizing these free radicals is antioxidants. It isn’t this simple, but for our purposes, let’s say that one antioxidant kills one free radical. We are going to have some amount of free radicals in our body so we have to make sure we get more antioxidants into our body so they can keep neutralizing the free radicals and help our bodies stay healthy.
The important thing to discuss is what you can expect as far as results if you start taking antioxidant supplements. Well, it is not the same for each person, but many people feel more energy and even lose body fat. The theory is: as the free radicals stop destroying cells, your body is healthier and does not age as fast. Yep, many people say that antioxidants can actually slow the aging process. I think this sounds like a really good thing.
Now I suppose you want to know where you can get more of these antioxidant things. You get antioxidants if you eat some fruits like blueberries, pomegranates, and the very popular acia berry. If you are into green vegetables, you can also get antioxidants from broccoli. What you need to be concerned with is what the antioxidant content is in the different fruits and vegetables and how you can add them to your diet. There are two options here, you can either eat the fruits and vegetables or you can purchase a health supplement to get them. Many people opt for the supplement because it is quicker and frequently cheaper than getting a lot of extra fresh fruits which can spoil in a matter of days.
I am not going to give you a complete listing of antioxidant values. I’m not even going to try to explain what the number mean (it is a pretty complex and scientific), but it is pretty easy to see that 200 antioxidants is better than 100 and with antioxidants the more you have the better so I would say that acai berry is best.
Admittedly, I have not seen the actual scientific papers that produced these results, I have seen them in many different places so I think it is highly likely they are accurate.
* Broccoli – 900 ORAC
* Peach – 1,300 ORAC
* Strawberry – 2,600 ORAC
* Blueberry – 3,200 ORAC
* Pomegranate – 10,500 ORAC
* Acai Berry – 18,400 ORAC
That’s all I really have to share. Now you have to choose what if anything you are going to do, but if I was making the decision, I would pick the food with the highest value. I would also get it in a supplement instead of eating it whole because it is way more efficient and cheaper. In addition to that, I don’t really like fruits and vegetables very much and swallowing a capsule is easier than eating a bunch of fruits and vegetables. To me, it appears obvious which is the best, but you have to choose for yourself if you are going to try best antioxidant dietary supplement.
I thank you for reading my article and recommend that you keep a look out for more information about acai berries as well as the newly popularized resveratrol which was recently featured on 60 minutes. As with any new dietary supplement or vitamin, you should consult with your doctor before you start using it.
