Anti aging: factors and elements

You can be 35 years old and appear to be 50. You could be sixty years old and feel forty. But, since you are looking at this article, I’ll assume that whatever age you are at this point, you wish to either better it or you want to lessen the pace of the aging process as much as possible. The best anti aging product is in fact lifestyle choices. Beneficial life-style choices will enhance the benefits you get through the products you select for your skin and body (if at all you need them). This involves intelligent interactions with basic elements that affect the ageing process.

I want to suggest to you, before you rush out and invest your hard earned money on the next anti-aging solution or supplement that you simply consider all of the things which might be affecting how you feel and how you look. If you’re wary of ageing, or simply desire to look more youthful than you do currently, you have to take into account these elements, understand them, and know how to manage them to achieve the best outcomes in your journey towards a younger you. These elements are

• Free Radicals
• Anti-Oxidants
• Water
• Ultra-Violet radiation

The aging process is associated with these elements and mastering them will enable you look and feel much younger than you are. Our involvements with them are quite inevitable as they are part of the living process. We will now be concerned with the understanding of each element. Don’t worry, it will be a breeze!

FREE RADICALS

The human body is composed of many different types of cells. Cells are composed of many different types of molecules. Molecules consist of one or more atoms of one or more elements joined by chemical bonds. free radicals are atoms or molecules which contain unpaired electrons. Since electrons have a very strong tendency to exist in a paired rather than an unpaired state, free radicals indiscriminately pick up electrons from other atoms, which in turn converts those other atoms into secondary free radicals, thus setting up a chain reaction which can cause substantial biological damage.

Free radicals and ageing

Dr. Denham Harmon, M.D., Ph.D. first proposed a theory of aging as the indiscriminate chemical re-activity of free radicals possibly leading to random biological damage. His idea has had much experimental success, and it is now considered a major theory of aging.

Mechanism of free radical damage

Stay with me here. Chemically, a substance is oxidized when electrons are removed and reduced when electrons are added. All chemical reactions involve the transfer of electrons. The body generates energy by gradually oxidizing its food in a controlled manner and storing it in the form of chemical potential energy, called ATP.

Ironically, this energy-generation mechanism which is so essential to life can also set the stage for cell damage. The oxidation of foodstuffs is like a controlled fire which liberates energy but can also let sparks fly, giving rise to potential damage. The sparks in this analogy are free electrons escaping the transport system. These unpaired electrons readily form free radical molecules which are chemically reactive and highly unstable.

It is these free radical molecules which rapidly react with other molecules, setting off a chain reaction of free radical formation, somewhat similar to an atomic explosion. So now we have this molecule which is missing an electron and is dying to get its hands on an electron to help fill its need. This free radical now goes and steals an electron from another molecule that is more willing to give one up and thus it becomes satisfied, but now the victim molecule has become a free radical! This goes on for quite some time. We therefore call this process the chain reaction of free radicals.

Cellular attack!

Cell membranes are made of unsaturated lipids. The unsaturated lipid molecules of cell membranes are particularly susceptible to this damaging free radicals process and readily contribute to the uncontrolled chain reaction. Oxidative damage, another name for the chemical reaction that free radicals cause, can lead to a breakdown or even hardening of lipids, which makeup all cell walls. If the cell wall is hardened (lipid peroxidation) then it becomes impossible for the cell to properly get its nutrients, get signals from other cells to perform an action (such as firing of a neuron) and many other cellular activities can be affected. In addition to the cell walls, other biological molecules are also susceptible to damage, including RNA, DNA and protein enzymes.

Point of contact in ageing

The primary site of free radical damage is the DNA found in the mitochondria. Mitochondria are small membrane-enclosed regions of a cell which produce the chemicals a cell uses for energy. Mitochondria are the “energy factory” of the cell. Every cell contains an enormous set of molecules called DNA which provide chemical instructions for a cell to function. This DNA is found in the nucleus of the cell, which serves as the “command center” of the cell, as well as in the mitochondria. The cell automatically fixes much of the damage done to nuclear DNA. However, the DNA in the mitochondria cannot be readily fixed. Therefore, extensive DNA damage accumulates over time and shuts down mitochondria, causing the cells to die and the organism to age.

Inevitable

Hence, this free radical generation process can disrupt all levels of cell function. This is why free radical damage is thought to be such a basic mechanism of tissue injury. It damages us at the cellular level. This free radical damage cannot be prevented or cured by any drugs – in fact most drugs are sources of MORE free radicals in the body. So what do we do? The next article will answer that!