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Chemicals are a common source of chronic stress. What makes them so insidious is that many of the sources of exposure cannot be seen. Examples in the air we breathe include auto exhaust, smog, smoke stacks, and out-gassing from mattresses, carpets, drapes, upholstery, plastics and man-made building materials. Examples in the foods we eat include hormones and antibiotics used in raising animals whose meat we eat, pesticides and herbicides used on fruits and vegetables (that are also concentrated in the bodies of animals that we eat) and plasticizers from plastic containers that we buy and heat our food in. Examples in things that touch our skin are pesticides and herbicides that our sprayed with reckless abandon on the lawns and gardens that our children and pets play on. In fact scores of volatile organic chemicals can be measured in each exhalation of every person living in the industrialized world.
Free radicals, which are potentially destructive by-products
of oxidative stress in the body, can be produced by chemicals,
by-products of chemicals or infectious agents, as well as
by our own normal metabolic processes. Our first line of defense
against free radical damage is a very complex group of chemical
reactions involving the body's sulfhydryl line of defense.
A free radical is a chemical compound containing a highly
reactive unpaired electron; the sulfhydryl group neutralizes
the free radical by binding with the unpaired electron, rendering
the chemical compound non-reactive.
In the event any free radicals elude the sulfhydryl line of defense, they are entrapped and scavenged by antioxidants like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, Selenium, Glutathione and others. If you have good antioxidant function, and good levels and reserves of the nutrients needed to mobilize the entrapping and scavenging systems of your body, you can successfully neutralize your free radical load. The consequence of free radical production in excess of antioxidant capacity is oxidative stress which manifests as damage to cell membrane lipids, an increase in DNA Adducts and damage to cellular proteins that can cause increased risk for all degenerative diseases, especially cancer.
DNA Adducts are covalent adducts between chemicals or their
by-products and cellular DNA. Such couplings activate DNA
repair processes and unless repaired prior to DNA replication,
may lead to nucleotide substitutions, deletions and chromosome
rearrangements. They reflect the molecular effect of exposure
to toxic chemicals and their bioaccumulation throughout life.
The binding of chemicals to DNA may cause DNA damage, modification
of bases or point mutation. Should this point mutation be
transcribed and translated, it will lead to modification of
protein structure, eventual alteration of function and finally
to disease. An increased level of DNA adducts have been associated
with an increased risk for cancer.
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