What are Antioxidants & Free Radicals?


Let’s start with free radicals. These are toxic byproducts your body creates when you digest food. They are also produced when you have exposure to pollution or radiation. Free radicals are unstable molecules that mess up your DNA. They can cause heart disease, cancer, and other illness. The good news is your body has a secret weapon…

Antioxidants to the rescue!  

Your body fights free radicals with molecules called antioxidants. These antioxidants neutralize free radicals, preventing them from damaging your cells. Yet, free radicals do play an essential role in your survival. 

Your immune system uses free radicals to fight infections. That’s why your body must maintain a balance of both free radicals and antioxidants. An improper balance may lead to an unhealthy state called oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress is nasty. It can damage your DNA, increase your risk of Head and Neck Cancer, or cardiovascular disease.

All living things make their own antioxidants to fight free radicals. Our bodies make antioxidants called glutathione. Unfortunately, glutathione levels decrease with age, disease, infection, and stress. This puts you at risk for oxidative stress. We can increase glutathione levels through diet, exercise, sleep, and supplements. 

How to bolster your antioxidant levels 

As always, your diet plays a huge role…

Eat foods like poultry, beef, and fish. Consume plant-based food sources like nuts, fruits, and vegetables. Try broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, watercress. Add garlic, shallots, onions, and spices like turmeric. Turmeric has curcuminoids that serve a dual function. Curcuminoids are antioxidants and reduce inflammation. 

Vitamin C is a huge help… 

Vitamin C is found in many foods, especially fruits and vegetables. It works as an antioxidant by protecting us against free radical damage. It destroys free radicals before they attack our glutathione! Juices in blood oranges and orange juice, coffee, and green tea also help boost your glutathione levels. 

Exercise – get your body moving! 

Regular exercise that includes and cardio and weight training can increase glutathione levels.

Make sure you’re getting plenty of sleep… 

Sleep is necessary to maintain and increase antioxidant levels. Poor sleep can decrease antioxidant levels in the body. Scientists recently learned the brain is bathed in cerebral fluid during the sleep cycle. Perhaps this fluid contains the secret to why antioxidants increase during sleep. Lie back, close your eyes and let your brain soak! 

It’s more than ok to lean on supplements… 

Food processing destroys most nutrients before they even get to your body. Glutathione from food is difficult to absorb. Liposomal Glutathione is easily absorbed into your bloodstream and can help keep you healthy and thriving!

In conclusion… 

Glutathione does more than reduce oxidative stress. By keeping you healthy on the inside, your skin appears less wrinkled and lighter. A defender, fighting free radicals on the inside with a youthful glow on the outside!  Who doesn’t need that?


Inside the neutrophil phagosome: oxidants, myeloperoxidase, and bacterial killing by Hampton MB1Kettle AJWinterbourn CC, NCBI, Nov 1998, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9787133

Free radicals hasten head and neck cancer risk: A study of total oxidant, total antioxidant, DNA damage, and histological grade by AK Singh,* P Pandey,1,* M TewariHP Pandey,2 IS Gambhir,1 and HS Shukla, NCBI April – June 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4944358/

Glutathione!. Integr Med by Pizzorno J. (Encinitas). 2014;13(1):8–12., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684116/

Role of curcumin in systemic and oral health: by Nagpal M, Sood S. J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2013;4(1):3–7. doi:10.4103/0976-9668.107253, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3633300/

What is glutathione and how can I get more of it? By Mark Hyman,  https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/05/12/what-is-glutathione-and-how-do-i-get-more-of-it/

10 Natural Ways to Increase Your Glutathione Levels by Kaitlyn Berkheiser, 2018, Healthline, https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-to-increase-glutathione#section1

Effects of exercise training on the glutathione antioxidant system, Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil. 2007 Oct;14(5):630-7., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17925621

Sleep deprivation and oxidative stress in animal models: a systematic review by Villafuerte G, Miguel-Puga A, Rodríguez EM, Machado S, Manjarrez E, Arias-Carrión O, US National Library of Medicine, 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25945148

Coupled electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and cerebrospinal fluid oscillations in human sleep by N. Fultz, G. Bonmassar, K. Setsompop, R. Stickgold, B. Rosen, J. Polimeni, L. Lewis, Science, Nov 2019, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/628

How the Gut Biome Affects the Brain



You have over 100 trillion microorganisms in your gut; that’s 10x the amount of actual cells in your body. Those bacteria have a lot to do with how your body responds to things. Your gut biomes are critical to your nervous system and your immune system development. They have a direct line of communication with the brain, and it all has to do with something called the gut-brain axis.

The gut-brain axis is essentially the line of communication between the gut and the brain, which largely determines your gut health, as well as our overall brain health and function, including your moods.

Let’s go over three things that dictate how the brain and gut communicate…

Introducing the Vagus Nerve, Gut Brain Axis and Enteric Nervous System…

The vagus nerve is a major nerve that runs from the base of your brain all the way down your spine, through you thorax, and into your abdomen. Essentially, it controls almost all organ function down from your neck to the second part of your transverse colon. That means that the vagus nerve is automatically regulating all of the autonomous function of the organs there. It’s what’s causing you to breath, sweat, talk, etc. You can think of it as a major freeway connecting the brain and the gut.

The enteric nervous system is extremely interesting; it’s essentially your second brain. It has a system of about 200 to 600 million neurons in the gut. They have their own ability to be motor neurons and dictate what the gut does, outside of the brain’s control. To put this into a little more perspective, if your stomach or your gut recognizes something, it has the ability to operate completely autonomously from the brain. So, you have your central nervous system which is what your brain and whole body are run by, and then we have the ENS – enteric nervous system. A system that operates completely separate from the brain and calls its own shots.

This basically means that the gut has the ability to influence its own activity, but also the activity of the rest of our body, because it still communicates with the brain which leads me to the next talking point.

The gut brain axis is a bidirectional communication between the gut and the brain, it’s the direct communication. Studies are beginning to show that there’s a strong link between the emotional/cognitive effects, and the overall peripheral nervous effects of the gut. This all has to do with the gut brain axis.

We’re starting to see some strong evidence of the gut’s performance affecting the brain’s performance. Between the vagus nerve, gut brain axis, and the enteric nervous system. This gives you a trifecta that is almost entirely dictating what your body does, based on what goes in your gut.

The science on this is interesting…

There’s an intriguing study that you’re likely to find referenced everywhere if you start looking at the enteric nervous system. The study took three groups of mice, which were all placed under some form of stress. In this case, they took baby mice and separated them from their mothers.

The first group of mice was completely germ free, they had no gut bacteria whatsoever, and they were left in a completely sterile environment. The second group was a normal group of mice with a normal functioning gut biome. This group was not kept in a sterile environment. The third group of mice was another normal group of mice that was not separated from their mothers. There was no stress induced on the third group at all.

What they were looking at was what happens to the brain when the gut biome are affected and they’re stressed. What’s interesting is, when the first group of mice had stress induced upon them, they found that there was an increase in corticosterone and the stress hormones. But, there was no change in depression or anxiety. The next group, when stress induced, saw an instance of depression and anxiety, and it had to do with the gut microbiome. The third group saw no change at all, because they didn’t induce stress on them.

Then, they took it a step further…

From this study, it’s easy to conclude that there’s definitely an effect on the gut microbiome and mood, but they wanted to see how far they could push this. So, they took the germ free sterile group and they introduced them and exposed them to the gut bacteria from the other group. And then, they stressed them again. Guess what? That group, now that they had the gut bacteria, did see symptoms of depression and anxiety. Confirming that the link between the gut microbiome and stress can definitely end up playing a role in how our guts and brains communicate.


So, what can you do to start taking control of your brain health via your gut health?

Get your probiotics in! Whether it’s from probiotic foods, or probiotic supplements. Probiotics increase something called GABA, which stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid. It’s a big component of your brain’s calming ability. It’s been shown to promote calmness in the brain, and has been shown to increase when we consume probiotics.
Additionally, good gut bacteria also helps the brains receptiveness to GABA in the first place. This is one of the strongest links to feeling good and solving mood issues that take place when you’re stressed out.

Although it’s not the end all be all, it’s definitely something to start looking into and understanding how powerful the gut really is when it comes to dictating what our brains do!

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