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Antioxidants and Free-Radical Damage

By Paula Begoun

Antioxidants and free-radical damage are considered so vital to our understanding of the origins of cancer, aging, illness, and disease that they have become a profound area of research. An "antioxidant" isn't a type of ingredient, but the function a specific ingredient can perform on the skin. Free-radical damage is what antioxidants are supposed to take care of, either by stopping new damage, or by reversing earlier damage caused by free radicals.

Let's begin by saying that free-radical damage is bad for the skin. Theoretically, free-radical damage can cause deterioration of the skin's support structures, decreasing elasticity and resilience. The presence of antioxidants in the diet, and, possibly, the topical application of antioxidants in skin-care products, plays a part in slowing down free-radical damage. Antioxidants are ingredients such as vitamins A, C, and E; superoxide dismutase; flavonoids; beta carotene; glutathione; selenium; and zinc.

Despite the proliferation of skin-care products containing antioxidants, according to Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg, chief of antioxidants research at Tufts University, "there is no conclusive scientific evidence that antioxidants really prevent wrinkles, nor is there any information about how much antioxidant(s) or exactly which one(s) has to be present in a product to have an effect."

Even if antioxidants did work to prevent free-radical damage on the skin, the results would hardly be immediate. Free-radical damage in the human body can continue for years before any deterioration can be detected and you can't slap on an antioxidant and expect to immediately notice your wrinkles disappearing.

Despite this lack of hard evidence, fashion magazines and cosmetics companies have heralded the elimination of free-radical damage as the fountain of youth. The excitement around antioxidants is understandable. According to many skin experts, all aspects of aging, including wrinkling, are caused by free-radical damage. Vitamin and cosmetics companies want you to believe their antioxidant products can eliminate it. It isn't known is whether or not you can really stop free-radical damage from taking place on the skin.

Free-Radical Damage

Free-radical damage occurs on an atomic level. Molecules are made of atoms, and a single atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons are always found in pairs. However, when oxygen molecules are involved in a chemical reaction, they can lose one of their electrons. This oxygen molecule that now only has one electron is called a free radical. With only one electron the oxygen molecule must quickly find another electron, and it does this by taking the electron from another molecule. When that molecule in turn loses one of its electrons, it too must seek out another, in a continuing reaction. Molecules attempting to repair themselves in this way trigger a cascading event called "free-radical damage."

What causes a molecule to let go of one of its electrons, generating free-radical damage? The answer is oxygen or any compound that contains an oxygen molecule, such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and superoxide) plus sunlight, and pollution.

You may be asking: With all that free-radical damage taking place, and all this oxygen around us (the air we breathe contains about 20% oxygen), how is it that we are still walking around? Why are we still living? The answer to that is antioxidants.

Antioxidants
Antioxidants prevent unstable oxygen molecules (made unstable by loss of one electron) from interacting with other molecules (taking one of their electrons) and consequently causing them to become unstable, a process that starts the free-radical chain reaction. Fortunately, a vast assortment of antioxidants can be found in both the human body and in the plant world.

So what does that have to do with wrinkles? No one is exactly sure, but theoretically wrinkles appear when the free-radical damage originates from natural environmental factors and fails to be cancelled out by some amount of antioxidant protection. If we don't get enough antioxidant protection, either from our own body's production, from dietary sources, or from antioxidants, including those we put on our skin, free-radical damage continues unrestrained, causing cells to break down and impairing or destroying their ability to function normally.

There's just one problem, the fact that free-radical damage is constant and extensive. Major investigation is now underway in this fascinating area of human aging and sun damage, factors that influence wrinkling. However, the research is still in its infancy, and suggesting anything else is sheer fantasy.

Almost every company makes moisturizers that contain antioxidants, so they aren't hard to find. You won't see any difference in your skin, but if free-radical damage can be slowed, then antioxidants should help. Many scientists think that if there is a fountain of youth, antioxidants could be in it.

Information on antioxidants and free-radical damage comes from a number of scientific journals, including these devoted to the subject of antioxidant research and activity: Free Radical Research, Free Radical Biology and Medicine, Antioxidants and Redox Signaling, Oxidative Stress and Aging, Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, Mechanisms of Ageing and Development, Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences, Photodermatology, Photoimmunology, Photomedicine, and Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences.

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