Like a single free radical, a single raindrop seems to do little damage. Yet with the combination of trillions of raindrops over time, it can be devistating just as it is in environmental erosion.
The damage free radicals create throughout the body is random. Trillions of molecules are affected every second. While a single raindrop on the rock face of a mountain does no damage—and even a single rain shower does no perceptible damage—a million rainstorms begin to take a toll. Come back a million years later and you can see that over time, raindrops have begun to change the landscape. Several million years later, the mountain is totally eroded away and ceases to exist. So it is with free radicals. A single free radical does no perceptible damage, but trillions of free radicals—over time—cause the aging process and can result in various degenerative conditions. By reducing the amount of free radicals, we can greatly improve our health and slow down the aging process.
Scientists have known about free radicals for some time. Free radicals are a result of metabolism; in other words, every living person and every living animal produces free radicals. One can compare free radicals that living beings produce to the exhaust produced by a combustion engine. As long as a combustion engine is running it is producing exhaust; similarly, as long as we are living we will be producing free radicals.
A free radical is any atom or molecule that has a single unpaired electron as an outer shell. Technically, a free radical is a molecule or atom that is missing an electron and, since it is missing an electron, its chemical makeup demands that it find an electron to fill the void. Electrons are easy to come by. They are available anywhere in adjacent molecules or adjacent tissue. It literally takes a millionth of a second to solve the problem.
To solve their problem, free radicals reach out and grab an electron from a surrounding molecule, usually from within the same cell or from a surrounding cell. When it steals that electron from the adjacent molecule, it does damage to the molecule. It’s just a little dam-age—but it’s damage nonetheless; and when the damaged cell reproduces itself and forms a new cell, the new cell is not quite the same as the old cell. It’s a little less robust. And that is how the aging process works.
It is estimated there are approximately four new free radicals created in every cell in our bodies every second. Since our bodies have approximately 36 trillion cells, that means there are hundreds of trillions of free radicals being produced in our bodies every minute—a constant barrage of free radicals that can damage our bodies over time.
The life of a free radical is about one millionth of a second. It takes about that much time for one molecule to rob another molecule of an electron. As soon as the robbery is complete, the original molecule is no longer a free radical, but the molecule from which the electron was robbed is now missing an electron and has become a free radical and will reach out and steal an electron from an adjacent molecule. Then that molecule will steal an electron from an adjacent molecule and so forth, creating a cascading chain reaction until a free radical meets up with an antioxidant.
An antioxidant molecule sacrifices itself to stop the chain reaction. When a free radical steals an electron from an anti-oxidant, the antioxidant molecule does not steal an atom from an adjacent molecule, and so the chain reaction stops. That’s why nutritionists constantly advise us to make sure there is an adequate supply of antioxidants within our blood at all times. Researchers have made clear that free radicals are responsible not only for creating the aging process, but also for creating most degenerative diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, dementia, diabetes, arthritis, and rheumatism.
It stands to reason that if we can reduce the number of free radical transactions in our bodies, we could significantly slow the aging process and reduce the likelihood that we will fall victim to one of these serious degenerative diseases.
We will never be able to shut down all free radical activity; that is simply not possible. Metabolism, digesting food, and breathing will all produce free radicals. But if we can stop the chain reaction, if we can stop that first free radical from creating a second and a third and then thousands and ultimately trillions of free radicals, we can hope to slow down the damage that free radicals cause.
The solution for this can be found in the next article.