What Are the Most Powerful Antioxidants?

Grade school teachers taught you that vitamins and other essential minerals are necessary to keep your body in tip top shape. Then as the millennium turns, new wonder phytochemicals started to gain popularity among consumers and significant interest from the medical and scientific community. Antioxidant (AO) level became the basis of nutrition.

Conversations about dietary supplement are no longer confined to single capital letters and instead, a smorgasbord of compounds, such as phytonutrients, polyphenols, flavonoids and tocopherols are now considered worthy topics as well.

Here is a list of the most powerful antioxidants for you to choose from.

1. Glutathione

Aside from being a popular skin whitener, glutathione is touted as the CEO of all antioxidants due to its very high potency against free radicals. Some studies even show it as a possible cancer cure. The human body naturally produces this compound but only in small quantity. The amount is not even enough to brighten up dark spots on your face.

As a response to the hype, manufacturers started to sell it in capsule, liquid and pill forms. But there is a problem. What people do not know is that a certain enzyme in the gastric track breaks glutathione up when taken in. The compound wouldn’t even reach your intestinal walls.

This is the reason why many medical practitioners prefer to inject it directly to the blood stream just like how dermatological clinics commonly do it. Unfortunately again, studies show that the increase of glutathione level in the bloodstream after injecting it is only 50% at the highest. It is like paying for the whole package but receiving only half of it.

Unless technology comes up with an effective solution to maximize body absorption rate, its powerful potency will remain in vitro and non-biological.

2. Resveratrol

Grapes leaped to popularity due to this new discovery. This vine fruit is the most common source of this phytochemical, but surprisingly, their skins, which contain it, do not possess significant amounts to give the same effects as what clinical trials achieved. Peanut, which is the richest plant source of resveratrol, is also not enough. Thus, manufacturers jam-pack their supplements with high contents.

Oprah uses it. Rihanna uses it. Millions of people are now using it in the hopes of getting a younger body. In laboratory experiments, resveratrol drastically increased the life span of drosophila (fruit fly) by more than 20%. When you convert that to human life expectancy, it will allow you to live for up to 120 years.

Inauspiciously, that is not the case here. Human trials and its effects have limited records. A fruit fly's body structure is so much different from that of a human being. But as they say, it is better to have a single proof than nothing at all.

3. EGCG (Green Tea Extract)

Green tea is believed to be a key to Asians' healthier bodies than their Western counterparts. Although it is rich in caffeine content (even 10x higher than coffee), experts still believe that it is better than sipping a smoking brewed and espresso.

Said to be as powerful as resveratrol, there is really no concrete and conclusive scientific study to back-up the claim. However, some studies show that it is so powerful, it can even kill leukemia cells within 24 hours. For now, EGCG is far from being the next chemo drug. It is promising nevertheless.

4. Grape Seed extract

As the name implies, it is produced from the oil of extracted grape seeds. Lauded for its potency 20x to 50x higher than Vitamin C and E, respectively, it also shows promising characteristics to help stop edema from recurring on cancer patients and newly operated persons. So far, the human body's absorption rate is better on this compound than other powerful antioxidants.