Anti Aging Skin Care » Anti Aging Tips » Antioxidants for Anti Aging

Antioxidants for Anti Aging

Plant nutrients play an important role in anti aging. Fruit, vegetables and plant extracts have a collection of chemical constituents called phytochemicals or phytonutrients that are extremely beneficial to skin health and beauty.

In plants, phytochemicals give characteristics like color, which can help the plant by attracting the passing bees to help in pollination. Alternatively, they offer a protective effect to the plant to prevent insects from harming it or repel grazing animals. However, they have been found to have benefits for human health when examined in laboratories. Phytochemicals in plants make fruit and vegetables much more valuable than simply the macronutrients like vitamin C.

Antioxidants are one class of phytonutrients though there are numerous. Antioxidants functions by providing an extra oxygen molecule to those molecules that are missing free radicals. If antioxidants do not provide the missing oxygen molecule to free radicals, the free radicals will take an oxygen molecule from another compound in the body making one that was previously healthy and intact itself a free radical. Free radicals are not that bad but the effect they have on the body is negative as they can damage cells. Free radicals are formed as a normal by product of the metabolic processes of our cells as well as by our immune system, as it neutralize the effects of pathogens and the environment.

The best way is to keep the balance in the body where there is enough of a supply of antioxidants to manage with the body's production of free radicals.

Free radicals affect the skin in three main ways.

• They can modify the fatty layers in your cellular membranes. These fatty layers supply structure to the cell and control which nutrients and other agents can pass in and out.
• They can alter the DNA within cells, which not only develops into serious illnesses but also make your skin inclined to wrinkles and sagging before its natural biological time. Altered DNA produces a blueprint for collagen and elastin fibers that do not function like healthy normal ones.
• Moreover, to compound matters the skin's pores need healthy collagen and elastin fibers to stay tight and small. Therefore, another undesired result is open large pores.

Free radicals also proceed to a process called the cross-linking of collagen fibers. This occurs in the skins dermis as the collagen and elastin fibers become hard, thick and then bind together. Cross-linked fibers produce wrinkles, skin sag and cause your regular expression lines to become impressed in your face as a permanent fixture. By means of healthy collagen and elastin fibers, these expression lines would simply disappear once you moved your facial muscles in a different way. In addition, enzymes that metabolize collagen are encouraged by free radicals.

Other phytonutrients in plants that are of significance to skin beauty are carotenoids and flavanoids. Flavanoids are beneficial for the health of blood vessels. They strengthen the capillaries that provide important nutrients to the skin's cells as well as support cellular membranes. Healthy cell membranes restore quickly and slow the aging process. Carotenoids also strengthen cell membranes. It seems carrots are not just good for eyesight but also to delay aging. Moreover, flavanoids help reduce inflammation as well as increasing levels of glutathione which is an antioxidant.