Free Radicals

You can't see them. You can't feel them. They leave behind only fleeting traces of their presence. But make no mistake: Your heart, your lungs, your blood vessels--all of your organs and tissues--are under constant attack by wide-ranging teams of biological renegades. No part of your body is sheltered from the destructive assaults of these molecular outlaws, which are known as free radicals. In fact, many experts believe that free radicals pose one of the greatest single threats to our public health as we progress into the twenty-first century.

The latest research shows clearly that these lethal enemies to your health and life have solid links to the following:

* Heart and blood vessel disease. Free radicals seem to be the real culprits in damaging the low density lipoproteins LDL (bad cholesterol). Unless LDL becomes damaged or "modified," it seemingly is not harmful. The damaging of LDL thus appears to be a critical link between high blood cholesterol and the build-up of vessel-blocking cholesterol plaques, called atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is the major cause of hardening of the arteries and heart attack. Also, free radicals may be associated with low levels of high density lipoproteins HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol).

* Cancer. Radicals have been implicated in cancers of the lungs, cervix, skin, stomach, prostate, colon, and esophagus.

* Cataracts. Cloudiness of loss of transparency of the lens of the eye may result from the impact of free radicals.

* Aging. The breakdown and sagging of skin tissues and deterioration of bodily organs, which are associated with the aging process, are aggravated by free radicals. Much of the damage occurs as the radicals attack your DNA molecules and longevity determinant genes (LDG).

Other diseases that have been linked by medical research to the insidious operation of free radicals in your body read like the index of a medical encyclopedia. They include more than fifty conditions such as stroke, asthma, pancreatitis, inflammatory bowel diseases such as diverticulitis, and ulcerative colitis, peptic ulcers, chronic congestive heart failure, Parkinson's disease, sickle cell disease, leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, bleeding within a cavity of the brain, and high blood pressure.

Free radicals are indeed emerging as a great, new danger to our overall health and well-being. Whatever your health concern, you may assume that somehow, in some fashion, free radicals may be a factor in causing or exacerbating the condition. They are significantly increasing your risk of premature death.

What are Free Radicals?

Our bodies contain numerous unstable oxygen molecules that frequently collide with other particles and tissues. Chemical studies have demonstrated that the impact of those particles actually produces bursts of light. Their movement and appearance are volatile and unpredictable in comparison with other molecules because they have one or more unpaired electrons in their outer orbits. That deficiency in their structure causes them to seek out other molecules with which they can combine. In some ways, they are like powerful internal magnets that must latch onto something else if they are to gain any semblance of stability. Scientists have given those unstable oxygen molecules the rather adventuresome name free radicals. Other molecules, known as free oxygen species, behave much the same way as free radicals, though they are constructed somewhat differently. There are both unstable and stable oxygen molecules shooting about in your body. The stable oxygen is absolutely essential to sustain life.

Some unstable oxygen molecules (free radicals) are good in that they enable you to fight inflammation, kill bacteria, and control the tone of your smooth muscles, which regulate the working of your internal organs and blood vessels. The key to the effective and safe operation of free radicals in your body is balance, but the problem is that the delicately balanced mechanisms frequently get out of whack. To correct the situation, your body produces free radical scavengers--known as endogenous antioxidants--which gobble up the extra free radicals and prevent them from damaging your body. The problem is that too many free radicals may be generated by such factors as air pollution, cigarette smoke, ultraviolet light produced by the sun, pesticides, and other contaminants in your food--and even too much exercise. It seems that everywhere we turn, substances and situations threaten to flood our bodies with free radicals.

When your body becomes overwhelmed by extra free radicals, those unstable oxygen molecules are transformed from your allies into molecular predators. They begin to run wild, successfully attacking healthy as well as unhealthy parts of the body. Heart disease, various cancers, and many other diseases are frequently the result.

Some free radicals may do most of their damage to the various membranes and tissue coverings in your body. They may injure the lenses of your eyes and cause cataracts, or they may attack skin tissues and foster premature aging. Yet, women and men have reported that a few months after starting an antioxidant program, they have noticed smoother and more pliable skin and the disappearance of dry, cracked areas on the elbows and other parts of the body.

History

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, no one knew that free radicals could exist and operate independently. In fact, it has been only in the last four or five decades that our scientific understanding of the free radical/antioxidant connection has emerged. Chemists in the nineteenth century used the term "free radical" to refer to a group of atoms that form a molecule. In those days, scientists did not believe that free radicals could exist independently, or in a free state. But things changed dramatically with the advent of the twentieth century and the work of Russian expatriate Moses Gomberg. He prepared the first independent organic free radical, triphenylmethyl, in a yellowish solution in his laboratory at the University of Michigan in 1900. In performing that experiment, he derived the free radical from triphenylmethane, a hydrocarbon that serves as the basis for many dyes.

As a result of the research of Gomberg and other scientists during the first part of the twentieth century, the term free radical came to mean a relatively unstable molecule with one or more unpaired electrons. As those single electrons move about in their orbit in the molecule, they create a kind of magnet effect, which causes the free radical to combine with nearby molecules. Many free radicals are so unstable that they can exist for only a fleeting moment, a microsecond. During their brief life, the radicals act as catalysts, or bridges, to spark chemical reactions and changes in other molecules. The high-speed, highly interactive quality of many free radicals was identified in experiments by Friedrich Adolf Paneth, and Austrian chemist, who collaborated with W. Hofeditz, a German researcher. In 1929, they discovered the brief and powerful existence of the methyl and then the ethyl free radicals.

It was not until 1954 that the destructive power of free radicals on living organisms, including the human body, was recognized. Ironically, the culprit that received the finger of blame was the main support of life on earth, oxygen. Scientists during the 1940 and early 1950s had cataloged in their experiments a host of mysterious injuries to biological tissues. Fish, rats, and other animals suffered tissue damage, lower growth rates, and other injuries when they were exposed to high concentrations of oxygen. In humans, breathing pure oxygen for as short a period as six hours caused chest soreness, coughing, and sore throats--and longer periods of exposure could destroy the air cells in the lungs.

In addition, a form of blindness known as retrolental fibroplasia appeared among premature infants. The disease, which involved the formation of fibrous tissue behind the lens of the eyes, became widespread during the 1940s--and the medical establishment became increasingly puzzled. Finally, in 1954, scientific sleuths determined that the source of the problem was incubators, where the premature newborns were placed in an atmosphere with much higher amounts of oxygen than the 21 percent contained in ordinary air. American scientists Rebecca Gershman and Daniel L. Gilbert, linked the development of retrolental fibroplasia in premature babies to oxygen free radicals. In fact, they concluded that most of the damage done to living tissues is the result of oxygen radicals.

Even Joseph Priestly, the English chemist and cleric who discovered oxygen in 1774, questioned whether the gas, which is so essential to life, might also in some way be harmful. Priestly's suspicions remained in the realm of speculation until the middle of the twentieth century, when Gershman, Gilbert, and other researchers began to nail down our present understanding of the true dangers to human health of certain outlaw forms of oxygen. In the years that have followed the 1954 breakthrough, four extremely destructive forms of oxygen have been identified. Two of them--the hydroxyl radical and the superoxide radical--are true free radicals in that they have an unpaired electron in a molecular orbit. Two other renegade forms of the oxygen molecule, known as non-radical reactive oxygen species, can also do significant damage to the body. Labeled the oxygen singlet and hydrogen peroxide, these forms of oxygen, along with the two free radicals, are the main enemies.

The next major milestone in antioxidant and free radical research was achieved in 1968, when American scientists J. M. McCord and I. Fridovich discovered a natural antioxidant enzyme in the human body, superoxide dismutase (SOD). A popular assumption today is that most antioxidants enter the body from the outside through the diet or dietary supplements in the form of vitamins-E, -C, and beta carotene. But the 1968 breakthrough established that the body also possesses an important endogenous or internally produced antioxidant. McCord and Fridovich determined that the primary purpose of SOD is to remove the destructive free radical superoxide--one of the four major molecular outlaws mentioned above. Shortly afterward, they developed a landmark concept known as the "superoxide theory of oxygen toxicity." The theory states that the superoxide radical is a major cause of the damage inflicted by unstable oxygen in the body, and that SOD is the body's primary defense.

Fridovich, the discoverer of SOD, was also the first scientist to demonstrate that the most powerful and destructive free radical known to science, the oxygen renegade hydroxyl radical, can be formed in a biological system such as the human body. Increasingly, the evidence pointed toward a link between free radicals like the hydroxyl radical and cancer.

During the 1970s, scientists such as Lester Packer, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley, began to hone in on free radicals as a major threat to human health. At the same time, Packer has noted in a conversation with The New York Times Magazine that "we need free radicals to live"--for several reasons. For one thing, Packer and others have determined that free radicals benefit the body by working with the immune system to ward off disease by killing alien bacteria and other invaders that enter your body. Also, they help regulate the contraction of the smooth muscles of your blood vessels and contribute to the control of your blood vessels and contribute to the control of your blood flow by influencing the tone of the tissue lining of your vessels.

Free radicals are released during the normal metabolism of your body, as your food is turned into energy by your body's cells. Your body's defense systems, including the antioxidant enzymes SOD, catalase, and GSH, exist to keep the output of free radicals in balance. The problem arises when too many free radicals are generated for your internal antioxidant police force. When that happens, the radicals become renegades. The hydroxyl radical is a very destructive character. It, as well as a number of other unstable oxygen molecules, has been linked to many serious diseases, including cancer. The primary means by which radicals cause cancer is by launching an attack on the nucleus of cells and damaging the DNA, which may lead to cell mutations.

The increased incidence of cancer with advancing age may be due, at least in part, to the increasing level of free-radical reactions with age, along with the diminishing ability of the immune system to eliminate the altered cells. Researchers found that while cigarette smoking is the single most important known cause of cancer and other chronic diseases today, about 70 percent of cancer isn't generally linked to smoking. Among the other factors that probably are contributing to the increased incidence of cancer, a prime candidate must be excessive free radical exposure due to the pollution of our environment.

Fortunately, we have protective shields available in the form of antioxidants. From cell culture and animal research, it appears that antioxidants alter cancer incidence and growth through their action as anticarcinogens, quenching free radicals or reacting with their product. Low intake of fruits and vegetables, especially those with yellow-reddish, orange and blue and purple pigmentation is consistently associated with increased risk of lung cancer, according to Regina G. Ziegler of the National Cancer Institute. Also, the risk of any cancer was higher if retinol (Vitamin A) was also low.

In the early 1980s, Dr. Daniel Steinberg, professor of medicine at the University of California in San Diego, proposed the theory that oxidation--or the combining of oxygen free radicals with other LDL particles in the blood stream and tissues--is the basis for the formation of plaque and clogging of the body's vessels. Free radicals depart from white blood cells, or macrophages, to attack the LDL, which eventually combines with the macrophages to form foam cells. The process of oxidation is what causes food to spoil or become rancid when left on the counter, exposed to the oxygen in air. Steinberg's insight was a culminating breakthrough in a long line of scientific findings, which began in 1910, when cholesterol was found in atherosclerotic plaques. Later, in 1952, scientists discovered that oxidized lipids (or fats) were present in the plaque. Then, in 1961, researchers discovered that special types of white blood cells, macrophages, were a major component of plaque. Ten years later, in 1971, foam cells were identified in the plaque. Steinberg put those and other studies together to develop his theory that oxidation of LDL cholesterol is the major factor in atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

More recently, in the last two decades, Dr. Mark Pedersen ND, extensively researched the historical and clinical evidence of energizing and healing phytotonics (a word he coined to describe generic healing elixirs made from plants) to uncover their constitutional and curative powers. After formally studying botanicals for a decade and mineral tonics for another, he created a combination of eleven of history's best healing botanical nectars, literally the greatest tonic of all time, that contain the most powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatory substances to help build and maintain health and strengthen and balance the constitution providing power over the broadest spectrum of health issues imaginable. The nectars he chose were each selected because of the energizing, protecting, and healing polyphenols they contained. He named it Via Viente (alive with youth).