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.

Free-radical damage is bad for the skin, causing 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.

Free-radicals

According to many skin experts, all aspects of aging, including wrinkling, are caused by 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, 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.

Check out some of the Sunryz Dreams products that have antioxidants in them.