What is the difference between antioxidants and vitamins?!
Question:
What is the difference between antioxidants and vitamins?
Answers:
Vitamins are essential for life/metabolic processes. Your body does not make these molecules on it's own. That's why they are called "vita"mins, meaning they are VITAL for life.
Antioxidants can be vitamins and other nutrients that protect our cells from damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are formed as part of our natural metabolism but also by environmental factors, including smoking, pesticides, pollution and radiation. Free radicals are unstable molecules which react easily with essential molecules of our body, including DNA, fat and proteins.
When a free radical attacks a molecule, it will then become a free radical itself, causing a chain reaction which can result in the destruction of a cell. Antioxidants have the property to neutralize free radicals without becoming a free radicals themselves. When antioxidants neutralize free radicals by receiving or donating an electron they do not become antioxidants themselves because they are stable in both forms. In other words, antioxidants are chemicals that offer up their own electrons to the free radicals, thus preventing cellular damage.