Researchers around the world are beginning to understand the impact of free radicals on the human body, or as author Hari Sharma describes them, “destructive molecular sharks that tear up the cells in our bodies and cause both aging and disease.”
In her book titled “Freedom from Disease: How to Control Free Radicals, a Major Cause of Aging and Disease,” Sharma explains how controlling free radicals in the body through natural health care can protect us from the harmful illnesses they cause, such as cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, arthritis, Crohn’s Disease and many others.
The following is an excerpt from Sharma’s book detailing the interesting relationship we have with oxygen and its impact on illness and aging:
“Over the past decade, the free radical paradigm has helped solve this mystery of illness and aging. And the basic realization underlying the free radical paradigm is that oxygen, the atmospheric source of life, is also a source of degeneration, disease and, ultimately, death.
“We live surrounded by and suffused with oxygen. We take it completely for granted, walk through it thoughtlessly, breathe it in, sometimes greedily. Now, as if we suddenly discovered that water kills fish, we have discovered that oxygen kills cells, tissues, and, eventually, the entire body.
“The two-edged nature of oxygen is known as the oxygen paradox. On the one hand, oxygen bestows life-giving energy. Without oxygen a living cell can still extract energy from glucose molecules through anaerobic metabolism (anaerobic means ‘without air,’ or, more precisely, ‘not in the presence of oxygen’). With oxygen, however, the body can extract sixteen times as much energy from the same number of glucose molecules. Given the energy demands on the human system, the difference is life and death.
“Neurons in the brain are especially energy sensitive, and even minutes of oxygen starvation lead to rapid neuron death.
“On the other hand, as a moment’s reflection reveals, oxygen is extremely corrosive. A fine new automobile, left to the mercies of oxygen, will eventually rust down to a pile of dust. Oxygen spoils food, turns butter rancid, even eats the granite in our grandest mountains. Given the slightest opportunity, moreover, oxygen will burn to cinders anything flammable.
“The essential insight of the new free radical paradigm is that oxygen, if given the chance, destroys the molecular components of the body just as surely as it rusts metal and burns buildings.
“At its most destructive, oxygen combines with hydrogen into various unstable and highly reactive free radical molecules, as well as other reactive oxygen species (ROS). In these virulent forms, oxygen will systematically destroy a cell’s DNA, enzymes, proteins, and membranes, unless the body’s defenses keep the attack in check.
“This is the dark side of oxygen. Seen from the most extreme point of view, in fact, oxygen is a poison gas. Anyone who breathes pure oxygen for 48 hours will die, a victim of oxygen’s damage to the tissues of the lung.
“Living in the earth’s atmosphere, we continue to survive only because inert nitrogen dilutes oxygen down to 20% of the air we breathe and the body has developed coping mechanisms to counter oxygen’s destructive effects at levels this low.
“Our use of oxygen is thus a Faustian bargain, life-giving boon with a lethal curse attached. Oxygen powers the chemical reactions that provide energy for motion, sensation, and thought for all that makes possible animal and human life on this planet.
“But the oxygen that saturates our cells is also a constant threat to our survival. It mounts a relentless attack that eventually wears down our defenses and destroys our biological machinery. The body gets old because, in large part, oxygen wastes it away. The body suffers from a heart attack, or a stroke, or an outbreak of cancer because, in large part, oxygen has done its damage.
“Oxygen gives life, and oxygen takes it away.”
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