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Antioxidants are becoming the most talked about health and fitness trend in years. Everybody already knows that vitamins, vegetables, and fruits were very good for our health, we are just starting to realize how helpful antioxidants are for a healthy body. This article is going to discuss what an antioxidant is 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, go to Wikipedia and you can get more information. Ok, now that 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 neutralizes one free radical. Free radicals are pretty much a given so we have to make sure we get more antioxidants into our body so we can keep getting rid of the free radicals and stop the damage they cause to our cells.
You may be wondering what kind of benefits to expect from increasing your antioxidant consumption as you neutralize more free radicals. Well, it is not the same for each person, but most people have more energy and lose some body fat. In theory, as the free radicals stop destroying cells, your body is healthier and won’t age as fast. Yep, many people say that antioxidants can actually slow the aging process. I think this sounds like a really good thing.
The last thing to discuss is where to get these extra antioxidants. You get antioxidants if you eat some fruits like blueberries, pomegranates, and the ever popular acia berry. If you are into green vegetables, you can also get antioxidants from broccoli. What you need to be concerned with is how many antioxidants are 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 dietary supplement to get them. A lot of people opt for the supplement because it is quicker and frequently costs less than purchasing a bunch of extra fresh fruits which go bad in just a few days time.
I don’t have a complete listing of antioxidant values for you, but I do have some of the best and most popular. I’m not even going to try to explain what the number mean (mainly because I don’t know myself), but it is pretty easy to see that 200 antioxidants is more than 100 and with antioxidants more is better so I would say that acai berry is best.
While I have not seen the actual studies that produced these results, I have seen them in multiple 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
There really isn’t much more to talk about. 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. Supplements appeal to me more than eating whole foods because it is easier and usually cheaper. On top of that, I don’t really like fruits and vegetables that much and swallowing a supplement is easier than eating a lot of fruits and vegetables. To my untrained eye, it seems straight forward which is the highest rated, but you have to choose for yourself if you are going to take best antioxidant supplement.
I thank you for reading my article and recommend that you keep an eye out for more information on 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 check with a doctor before you start using it.
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