The Free Radical Theory of Aging

There are four processes that age our bodies from the inside out. I’ve nicknamed these “The Four Horsemen of Aging”. They are ubiquitous, insidious, and deadly.

One of them is oxidative damage.

Oxidative damage is the name given to the destruction wrought by rogue molecules known as “free radicals”. The role of free radicals in aging has been recognized at least since the 1950s, when an innovative scientist named Denham Harman, MD, PhD, proposed the free radical theory of aging.

Harman believed that as go the cells, so goes the body. If our cells age, our whole body ages (which makes perfect sense since we are, after all, made up of nothing but cells). Harman saw aging as the cellular accumulation of free radical damage over time—that our bodies are essentially “rusting from within.”

Years later, the free radical theory of aging was expanded to include not just aging, but degenerative diseases in general. We now know that oxidative damage plays a major role in every degenerative disease of aging from Alzheimer’s and cancer to heart disease and diabetes and even immune dysfunction. (Harman was nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1995.)

One effective way to fight oxidative damage is with antioxidants, which do exactly what their name implies—they work against oxidative damage.

If you’ve read my book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, you probably know that one of the biggest benefits of many of the foods I consider to be the healthiest in the world is that they are absolutely loaded with antioxidants.

Plants have their own built-in protection against the oxidative damage of the sun, and these built-in protectors function as cell protectors in our own body. The very pigments that make blueberries blue and raspberries red protect those berries from oxidative damage, and they do the same for you once inside your body.

The most famous of the powerhouse antioxidants are vitamin C and vitamin E, but that’s only the beginning of the list. Vitamin A is an antioxidant. Minerals like zinc and selenium are powerful antioxidants, as are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of plant compounds known as phytochemicals. Quercitin, for example, is found in apples and onions and has tremendous antioxidant activity. So does curcumin, a phytochemical found in turmeric, the spice that makes Indian food yellow.

Spices in general are a tremendous source of antioxidants as we’ll see later. And nutrients rarely found in any appreciable amount in food, like alpha lipoic acid, are also tremendous weapons in the battle against oxidative damage.

A diet high in antioxidants- from foods and also supplements- is probably one of the best defenses against premature (or unhealthy) aging.

It’s one of the many reasons for the greater health and longevity of people who regularly consume tons of fruits and vegetables.