The War Within - How Do We Produce Our Enemies!

We must know who are the culprits who are producing free radicals, if we want to win THE WAR WITHIN!

Strenuous Exercise:

Don't misunderstand me! Exercises do increase the free radical load in our body but that does not mean that you should stop exercising. Side effects of sedentary lifestyle are even more dangerous. Excessive strenuous exercise is harmful - is the message here. Moderate amount of antioxidants, which we get from our diets and supplements suffice the protection against the moderate exercise, which is desirable. The athletes, on the other hand, need to balance their diet so that significant amount of anti oxidants must be available to neutralize the free radicals they produce.

Stressful Life:

As with exercise emotional stress significantly raises the free radical levels in our body. More the stress, the more we produce them. You must have noticed how sickly you feel after any kind of emotional stress or heard about someone who had a heart attack following prolonged stress at work or elsewhere!

Air We Breath:

Today's city atmosphere is another major factor for increasing the free radical load in our body. The counterpart of us, who are in villages are much less prone to heart diseases or, other chronic degenerative diseases than us.

Air pollution contains ozone, nitrogen di oxide, sulphur di oxide and several hydro carbon molecules. They all genarate free radicals. Air pollution is responsible for asthma, chronic bronhitis, heart attacks and even cancers.

Another aspect of air pollution is occupational exposure to different chemicals like mineral dust, asbestos fibres etc. These cause host of occupational diseases like asbestosis, lung fibrosids, and even deadly cancers.

Smoking:

One of the greatest cause of oxidative stress is SMOKING. Smoking active or passive is associated with a host of diseases. To name a few are bronhial asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, lung cancer, cardio vascular diseases. Smoking releases various amount of toxins, those in turn produces plenty free radicals not only in the lungs but through out our body, each time we smoke. No other addiction harm our body like smoking does.

Water And Food We Consume:

To be frank, unless you are drinking distilled water, an impractical practice, you are at risk of increasing free radicals in your body.

The municipal water, or the tube well water we are getting in our country, India are not only contaminated with bacterias and viruses but also contaminated with host of other chemical agents and heavy metals even arsenic! The totally unregulated market of mineral water also offer to guarantee of protection.

What about the food? We are adding thousands of new chemicals each year in the form of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides to increase the crop yield; but at the cost of our health. Everything we consume be it fruits, vegetables, or grains are loaded with them and are responsible for our oxidative stress.

Medicines Are Not Innocent! :

Each chemotherapeutic agents, like antibiotics, anticancer drugs, radiation work by creating oxidative stress within the causative organisms or cells, thereby killing them. While doing these the damage also is transmitted to the normal cells of our body. Every drug you consume is actually a foreign material to your body and your body's all organ like kidneys, liver has to work hard to metabolize and eliminate them. This process produces plenty of free radicals and our body is under oxidative stress!