Click To View Products

ACAI: The Strongest Known Scavenger of Free Radicals?

By Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS, January 11, 2007, abstracted from "Antioxidant Capacity and Other Bioactivities of the Freeze-Dried Amazonian Palm Berry, Euterpe oleraceae Mart. (Acai)" in the November 2006 issue of the Journal of Agricultural Food and Chemistry .
As natural byproducts of metabolism in the human body, free radicals are most commonly found as reactive oxygen or nitrogen species.
The most common of these - superoxide radicals, hydroxyl radicals, and peroxyl radicals - have been associated with many chronic and degenerative diseases, including vascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, and overall aging.
Because free radicals contribute so significantly to the onset of disease, dietary antioxidants are believed to be good external sources to counteract free radicals in the body.
Popular antioxidants include vitamin C, Vitamin E, and antioxidants in green tea and olive oil. Now a new study has found another powerful source of antioxidants in the form of a fruit called Acai.
This fruit is consumed in a variety of beverages and food preparations in Brazil, Colombia, and Suriname and used medicinally as an anti-diarrheal agent.