OXIDATIVE STRESS AND ANTIOXIDANTS: AN OVERVIEW

Abstract

Oxidative stress refers to the imbalance between free radicals and their stabilizing agent’s
antioxidant enzymes in the body. Reactive oxygen species or free radicals can be produced by
normal cellular metabolism and react with biomolecules like protein, lipid, and DNA to cause
cellular damage and responsible for degenerative changes. At low concentration free radicals
play a vital role in the physiological regulation and cellular signaling processes but the high level
can cause deleterious changes in the cell. Contrary to these antioxidants lowers the oxidants by
donating its own electron to stabilize free radical and make it not reactive compound so as to
minimize the harmful effects generated by these radicals in the cell. Human life is meant for the
realization of scientific knowledge, and then tries to distribute it throughout the world. The
materialistic civilization stressing our body, therefore our cell age faster and suffer from
deleterious changes which arise in the body. Aging, the word is not new for decades and
recently, it has become a new approach of being live healthy and long life till death with the
progress in the medical sciences. The aging can be defined as the deleterious changes occur in
the cell due to oxidative metabolism in mitochondria. The overburden of oxidative burst is the
cause of conquering cell’s capability of surviving and to meet the challenges of change in the
environment with respect to time. Various theories regarding aging have been proposed by
various scientists to improve our knowledge about how we age. Aging not only presiding with
that of the human but other vertebrates also reproached.