What are Antioxidants?

Free radicals are constantly being created in your body. Without antioxidants, free radicals would cause serious harm very quickly. However, free radicals also serve important functions that are essential for a good health.

Your immune cells use free radicals to fight infections. It is critical for your body to maintain a certain balance of free radicals and antioxidants. When free radicals outnumber antioxidants, it can lead to oxidative stress.

Prolonged oxidative stress can damage your DNA and other important molecules in your body and the risk to develop cancer increases rapidly.

Why Glutathione is such an important antioxidant?

Glutathione is a very simple molecule that is produced naturally all the time in your body. It is a combination of three simple building blocks of protein or amino acids -- cysteine, glycine and glutamine.
The secret of the power of Glutathione is the sulfur (SH) chemical groups it contains. Sulfur is a sticky molecule. It acts like glue and all the bad stuff in the body stick to it, such as free radicals and toxins like mercury and other heavy metals.

A poor diet, pollution, toxins, stress, trauma, aging, medication, leaky gut, infections and radiation all deplete your glutathione.

Many people are missing the GSTM1 function, which is one of the most important genes needed in the process of creating and recycling glutathione in the body.

Before we started polluting our slies, lakes, water and even teeth humans simply didn't need a high capacity to get rid of toxins. Now these people have a high risk of getting chronically ill due to their glutathione deficiency.

Glutathione is so important for one simple reason: It recycles antioxidants. Free radicals get passed around from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then finally to glutathione which neutralises the free radicals and recycles other antioxidants. After this happens, the body can "reduce" or regenerate another protective glutathione molecule  to start again.

However, problems occur when we are overwhelmed with too much oxidative stress or too many toxins. Then the glutathione becomes depleted and we can no longer protect ourselves against free radicals, infections, or cancer and we can't get rid of toxins. This leads to further sickness and soon we are in the downward spiral of chronic illness.

But Glutathione is also critical in helping your immune system do its job of fighting infections and preventing cancer.

Glutathione is also the most critical and integral part of your detoxification system. All the toxins stick onto glutathione, which then carries them into the bile and the stool -- and out of your body.

And lastly, it also helps us reach peak mental and physical function. Research has shown that raised glutathione levels decrease muscle damage, reduce recovery time, increase strength and endurance and shift metabolism from fat production to muscle development.
If you are not in peak shape, you likely have glutathione deficiency.

What else you can do to support your health next to eating a rainbow of fruits and veggies?

We are exposed to toxins and free radicals all the time and need that extra portion of vitamins and minerals to support our immune system. 

Especially with Auto-Immune disease or gut issues you I highly encourage you to supplement on Antioxidants. Here it is very important to find a high quality one with a not too high dosage and which works with secondary plant substances.

One study compared the effects of drinking blood-orange juice and sugar water, both of which contained equal amounts of vitamin C. It found that the juice had significantly greater antioxidant power. These results suggest that taking just one or two isolated nutrients won’t have the same beneficial effects. That’s why it is important to choose a supplement with secondary plant substances.

I can recommend the Antiox pack and the Gut cleansing pack from Ringana to get your daily fibre and antioxidant intake and support your immune system. The Antiox pack is full of fresh secondary plant substances, vitamins and minerals extracted from buckwheat, mushrooms, rice and acerola, green tea extract, curcumin, different tocopherols, glutathione and fruit extracts. The Cleansing pack supports gut health with fresh fiber, vitamins and minerals, fennel seed extract, probiotics and psyllium powder.