Antioxidant Acai: Fighting Free Radicals
In the battle against skin damaging free radicals, the antioxidant power of acai is proving to be an effective defense.
Touted as a superfood, acai possesses significance for both your appearance and overall health. By adding acai to your diet, you can provide your body with an arsenal of antioxidants to combat free radicals. Learn about free radicals, antioxidants, and acai itself to fully understand the antioxidant value acai possesses.
This article will discuss:
Free Radicals
Free radicals cause damage ranging from the collagen layers of the skin to the organs.
Free radicals are composed of atoms that have one or more electrons that make them unstable. In order to become stable, these free radicals move throughout the body attempting to find another electron to bind with, resulting in damage to all parts of the body. Free radicals are a result of many inevitable factors. They form as food is metabolized and during other bodily functions, when exposure to the sun and pollutants occurs, and because of stress.
Free radicals have been linked to damage and diseases such as:
- The aging process
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Cardiovascular disease
- Cataracts
- Liver damage
Importance of Antioxidants
Despite the far-reaching damage of free radicals, there are natural combatants that exist within the human body and many fruits and vegetables: antioxidants.
Antioxidants are produced naturally in the body and derived from food. These molecules work to prevent or slow the causes of cellular damage, oxidation stress, and free radicals. Antioxidants are the chief weapon against the skin-damaging effects of free radicals.
Acai possesses 10 times the amount of antioxidants in grapes and twice the antioxidant power of blueberries. The overall antioxidant capacity of acai berries exceeds the USDA recommended daily oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) level of 5,000.
Two of the largest sources of antioxidant power within acai are:
- Flavonoid-like compounds
- Anthocyanin
The flavonoid-like compounds present in acai, which provide the purple pigmentation of the fruit, include orientin, homoorientin, scoparin, deoxyhexose, taxifolin, and isovitexin. These flavonoid-like compounds possess strong anti-inflammatory properties thus improving the skin’s appearance and protecting skin cells from free radical damage.
Anthocyanin works to stabilize free radicals that wreak havoc on skin cells and even reverse the damage caused by free radicals.
Power of Acai
Acai truly does possess anti-aging power and overall health benefits.
Grown in Brazil on the acai palm tree, the acai berry has a plethora of benefits due to its rich antioxidant content.
Implementing acai into your diet can help:
- Improve cellular regeneration in the skin
- Protect skin cells from free radical damage
- Increase energy and metabolism
- Enhance immune system functioning
- Minimize signs of aging
- Decrease inflammation
- Cleanse and detoxify the body
- Reduce stress
- Heighten mental clarity
- Lower cholesterol and blood pressure
Adding Acai to your Diet
Although it is not possible to attain freshly-picked acai berries at your grocery store due to the rapid rate at which acai berries perish, Dr. Perricone offers an acai-based powder.
Dr. Perricone’s Super Berry Powder with Acai is a simple way to add the antioxidant power of acai to your diet. This dietary supplement powder contains acai, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, and cranberry to achieve an ultra-high concentration of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties.
By mixing a glass of water with a packet of Super Berry Powder with Acai once daily, you can increase your body’s ability to fight free radicals and signs of aging.
I would like to become a tester, since I have so much skin damage from the early 80′s when oils were the rage for suntanning. Please let me know.
I am a bit skeptical of how much applying antioxidants to the skin will actually help. I would think consuming them by eating healthy fruits and vegetables would be more effective. However, I keep reading about how antioxidants in skincare can really help. Can antioxidants in skincare really help?
[...] Antioxidant Acai: Fighting Free Radicals In the battle against Skin damaging Free radicals, the antioxidant power of acai is proving to be an effective defense. Touted as a superfood, acai possesses. [...]