What We Really Know About Antioxidants

 

At first I was going to call this post the truth about Antioxidants but we don't know what the truth is.

There is a lot of research but nothing that is 100% the truth.

I actually think that this is something very true about medicine in general.

Ok actually I take that back.

To more accurately explain what I am trying to say, a very large part of what we can say about medicine is hypothesis.

Let me just stop right there because that in itself is an entire book in my opinion.

But the story of Antioxidants is just one great example of this.

The bottom line is that we don't need to take Antioxidants. What we do need is balance and in some situations we may be able to create the needed balance by taking antioxidants.

The real question is not if you should take Antioxidants or not, but which antioxidants should you take when.

A healthy diet should always include a large amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. This should give the regular person a sufficient amount of antioxidants. But if you read this article, you will start to understand that at certain times we can increase our consumption of certain antioxidants for a specific result.

But on the other hand high levels of antioxidants can cause an unwanted effect on the body.

Here is a longer more in detail article stating clinical trials showing how not all antioxidants are the same. 

Knowing which antioxidants can be helpful for an individuals specific health goals is definitely something that I am going to be doing more extensive research on in the future.

Here are the links to the two articles I referred to above.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2016.00024/full

https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Triathlon/News/Blogs/Fuel-Station/2019/January/14/The-Truth-About-Antioxidants

Red Onions Vs White Onions

 

And now we are going to talk about flavonoids.

But first just a bit about onions in general.

I feel like onions are like garlic just bigger and juicer. But that's not really true. Onions and garlic have a completely different chemical makeup. 

But they are both super healthy foods when eaten raw, I know that a lot of people hate to hear that one because they are so tasty when they are cooked. Even tastier when fried, yum.

The problem is that when you cook them you lose those healthy flavonoids, that's what gives them that strong flavor.

Onions, red and white, as well as garlic are rich in vitamins, minerals and flavonoids. But red onions have an extra type of flavonoids called anthocyanins. These bad boys are a powerful plant pigment that may be helpful in fighting off some nasty diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

This is not fully proven but there is research to support the statement.

Here is just one example.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082903/

Here is a short part of the article linked above.

"Research over the past decade has produced incontrovertible evidence for a vast array of health benefits arising from the consumption of fruits and vegetables. In an endeavor to identify the active health-promoting ingredients, many researchers have focused on the properties of the flavonoids, a large class of phenolic compounds that is abundant in such foods. Most prominent among the flavonoids are the anthocyanins—universal plant colorants responsible for the red, purple, and blue hues evident in many fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, and flowers. Represented by over 600 molecular structures as identified to date, anthocyanins are of particular interest to the food colorant industry due to their ability to impart vibrant colours to the product. Now it seems highly likely that they also enhance the health-promoting qualities of foods."

So in short the difference between red and white onions is the anthocyanins.

And in that little cut and paste I did there I also explained about the flavonoids, well they explained it for me.