Antioxidants. If you know anything about green tea and it’s health benefits, you’ve heard of antioxidants. You know that green tea can have lots of beneficial effects on your health. Much of these benefits come from the high levels of antioxidants in the tea. But what are antioxidants, and what exactly do they do? Good question.
Antioxidants are molecules, and they slow or prevent the oxidation of ‘free-radicals’ in your body. Free radicals are detrimental molecules that can cause a lot of damage to other molecules around them by stealing electrons. When one molecule steals electrons from another, this is called an oxidation reaction. Now what’s so bad about losing electrons you ask? Well, this can cause all sorts of problems, depending on the type of molecules free-radicals oxidise with.
Take oxygen. As you should know, oxygen is vital to most complex life-forms. But oxygen is also one of the most common free-radicals roaming your body. When an oxygen molecule is radicalized (when it loses electrons) it becomes positive in charge, and wants to take away electrons from other molecules around it. For example, an oxygen molecule steals electrons from a cell. This can permanently damage the cell’s DNA, and can cause a chain reaction that eventually leads to cancer. If the free-radical steals electrons from a protein, this can also cause a range of problems. ‘Enzyme Inhibition’ and ‘Protein Degredation’ are two of these problems. Enzyme Inhibition is when the free-radical embeds itself inside an enzyme; thus slowing or completely stopping the enzyme’s function. Protein Degredation is a little more complicated, but the free-radical ends up impairing immune system functionality.
So. Where do antioxidants fit into all that? Well, antioxidants react with, or ‘mop up’ the free-radicals in your body. They float around neutralizing the free-radicals by giving them electrons. By stopping the free-radicals, the antioxidants in green tea help to prevent cancer and fix impaired immune function.
