What Are Antioxidants?

Prioritising physical health and wellbeing has never been more important than right now - and what better time than a global pandemic to truly make this your focus?

While you can never guarantee that you won’t fall ill, there is a huge amount you can do to protect yourself by making sure you get enough exercise each day and by following a healthy, well-balanced diet, full off lots of lovely fresh fruit and vegetables, and with minimal intake of red meat, dairy and saturated fat.

Antioxidants have a huge role to play in keeping us all fit and healthy, molecules that neutralise the free radicals floating about that can cause us harm and damage our cells. Your body will produce its own antioxidants to help you stave off disease, but you can also find them in food, vital for topping up your defences.

Because of the way the world is now set up and the way we live our lives, we’re exposed to free radicals on a daily basis, found in the likes of air pollution, alcohol, cigarettes, high blood sugar, excessive sunbathing, viral infections and so on.

So it’s important that you take a look at your lifestyle and see if there are a few little changes you can make here and there that could have a big impact on your overall health.

A diet high in plant-based foods is one of the best ways of making sure that you’re giving yourself all the nutrients and antioxidants you need to keep illnesses at bay, so make sure you’re enjoying a varied amount of different fruits and vegetables each day. Green tea, dark chocolate and coffee are also great sources of antioxidants.

You can find them in some animal-based products (including fish), but to a lesser extent than in fruit and veg, so if you know you could be eating more plant-based food, you may want to start adding more of them into your shopping basket each week.

Some of the most important antioxidants are vitamins C and E, both of which do an awful lot to help protect our cells from damage.

So, bearing all this in mind, what should you start stocking up on now? Fill your cupboards with the likes of pecans (a great source of healthy fats and minerals), blueberries (one of the very best in terms of antioxidants), strawberries, artichokes, goji berries, red cabbage, kale, raspberries, beans and spinach.

You’ll have a great time working out how best to go about enjoying all these different foods and it’s just a matter of some internet research to find delicious recipes for all the family.

And, of course, you can top up your antioxidant levels and make sure you’re getting sufficient nutrients by taking monthly antioxidant liver detox supplements. These can assist with natural detoxification and help stimulate the natural processes of your liver, as well as boosting mental clarity.