THE WAR WITHIN

                                 

     OPPONENT'S ARMY

Welcome guys..!!! I hope you are doing well. Today in this blog we are going to learn about the very interesting concept which is very less known to the people and I call it "THE WAR WITHIN(our body)".

Now,

Sit back, close your eyes for a moment, and focus on your breathing. Relax your shoulders and breathe in as deeply as you can, and then slowly release the air from the lungs. Do this several times. Breathe as if you are inflating your whole body, clear down to your toes. Pause and then slowly exhale. Feels great, doesn't it? The air that enters our lungs brings life. And as we quicken our breathing through aerobic exercise or running, we feel invigorated and may even experience a feeling of euphoria.

Life is an intricately woven miracle, evident in every breath. As we fill our lungs with air rich with oxygen. These molecules of oxygen then pass through the thin walls of alveoli

of lungs into the blood, where it attaches itself to the hemoglobin in my blood, and our beating heart pumps this newly oxygenated blood back to all parts of our body. Then the hemoglobin releases the oxygen so it can enter the cells of our body, where it gives energy and life itself.

Now if we go a step deeper, inside every cell there is a furnace called "MITOCHONDRIA"  also called a powerhouse of the cell as it is taught in our school. Let's try to imagine these mitochondria as the warm fire which burns quietly and safely most of the time. But, but, but..... occasionally, out flies a cinder from fire and lands on our carpet, burning a tiny hole (which looks like a stain) on the carpet. Nope.!! One cinder does not pose any threat to our mighty carpet. WHOA..!!! but what happens if there is one cinder flying out and falling out on our carpet day after day, month after month then it will end up with a pretty ragged carpet in front of our fireplace.

Similarly, this microscopic organism, the mitochondria, within the cell reduces oxygen by the transfer of electrons to create energy into the form of ATP and produces a by-product of water. During this process, sometimes a "FREE RADICAL"  comes out just as the cinder flies out of the fire. And same as the carpet our body starts to get affected by free radicals. There's no problem until these free radicals are less in number. The real problem arises only when the number increases. Damage starts to occur when there are more free radicals. Whichever part of the body receives the highest free radical damage is the first to wear out. Yes..!!! It's as simple as that.

Wait.!! I have something which makes it more fun. The part of the body which receives the more free radical damage is the first to wear out. And it eventually leads to a "Degenerative disease". 

And by the way for the people who don't know what's a degenerative disease, this is the kind of disease for which there is no cure, except prevention and suppression.

Examples are Arthritis, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimers, strokes...ETC.


So, that's it guys now we've known about the opponent's army i.e FREE RADICALS which are waging war in our body.

 LET'S KNOW ABOUT THE SOLDIERS IN OUR ARMY AND WHAT DO WE NEED TO PROTECT OUR SOLDIER TO WIN THIS WAR. 

                                                      OUR ARMY

 THE ANTIOXIDANTS :

God did not leave us defenseless against the onslaught of free radicals. To be frank, we've been 

blessed with a marvelous and wonderful defense system naturally. we have our own soldiers who can neutralize these free radicals and render them harmless. We can call them "ANTIOXIDANTS". 

WHAT ARE ANTIOXIDANTS? 

  

Now to be more clear free radicals are mainly oxygen molecules or atoms that have at least one unpaired electron in their outer orbit. In the process of utilizing oxygen during normal metabolism

within the cell to create energy active free radicals are created. These always try to get an electron from any molecule or substance in the vicinity. now these move in a violent manner 

that they create bursts of light and may even damage the whole cell membrane, vessel wall, proteins, fats, or even the DNA nucleus of the cell. To make it simple we can call this whole process as "OXIDATIVE STRESS". 

While an ANTIOXIDANT is any substance that has the ability to an electron to the free radical and neutralizes it.

WHERE CAN WE GET ANTIOXIDANTS?

Don't worry my friend you don't have to possess any special ability in order to be able to gain the advantage of antioxidants because our body has the ability to create some of the antioxidants required. However our body does not produce all the required antioxidants and these must come from the food we consume or nutritional supplementation.

As long as adequate antioxidants are available to fight or neutralize the free radicals, we can be assured that our body is safe. But the real danger comes into existence only when the free radicals outnumber the antioxidants i.e., opponent's soldiers are more than our soldiers that we don't have any chance to win. Hence we can say that "BALANCE IS THE KEY". 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST : 

Now most antioxidants we get from vegetables and fruits. It's important to know that antioxidants do work as a team and are dependent on each other to work correctly as they are of different types and have different types of roles. They are different in different parts of our body and have different abilities like generating other antioxidants.

Some of the essential antioxidants are vitamin-A,vitamin-C,vitamin-E, and beta carotene.

THE CONCLUSION :

I know I have bored you with all the biology and chemistry combined, but here is the conclusion, this is a process which is undergoing in our body (body of every living human) and the victims of these free radicals are not at all less in the world. My intention is to try and educate as many as possible, just because you know that "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER".