Antioxidants do what?

Answer 1

Antioxidants may prevent or delay certain types of cell damage by preventing the oxidation of other molecules.

Oxidation is a chemical reaction that can produce free radicals, which can start chain reactions leading to damage to or death of the cell. Antioxidants stop the chain reactions by being oxidized themselves, to inhibit other oxidation reactions.

Answer 2

They prevent ageing.

Answer

Actually, antioxidants are components to nutrition mostly found in plants (fruits and veggies) that re-balance the cells in our bodies that are oxidizing (breaking down and losing electrons) from age, stress or exercise. They do so by donating electrons to cells in our bodies that have oxidized.

In the end they stop the generation of unwanted "free radical" electrons that were let loose from our cellular tissue. This is a good thing especially because those free radicals bounce around our bodies and cause damage to the nearby cells which were originally not oxidizing or decaying.

In short, an antioxidant stops free radicals from damaging the tissue in your body.

Answer 3

An antioxidant is any molecule that is stable with or without all its necessary electrons. A free radical, on the other hand, is a molecule that is unstable when it loses an electron.

An unstable free radical causes damage to nearby healthy cells when it "bounces" around looking for an electron to steal. A damaged healthy cell is the cause of aging, illness and disease.

The purpose of an antioxidant is to donate one of its electrons to the unstable free radicals. Once it has done that, both molecules are stable.

Antioxidants, therefore, are nature's solution to that problem.