An Omega 5 oil skin care tip -- always trust your nose

Smell the products -- you will sense the difference

Skin Care Tips and Lotions for Sensitive Skins

Soshanah Damadi

The skin is a fascinating organ, unmatched in its complexity, yet necessary for all aspects of daily life. Much of the time, the skin functions so well that we only notice it when we are uncomfortable. The skin is our interface or boundary between us and the environment and us and other people.

We are always looking for new and better products, practices and solutions to the stress which everyday life places on our skin.

Sensitive Skin Care Tips

Wear a sun block every day... The primary cause of premature aging is exposure to the sun without adequate care and protection.

Don't wash your skin too often... Washing strips oil and moisture. Besides, tap water contains chlorine which causes oxidative damage. Washing your face twice a day is sufficient.

Do not smoke... Smoking can cause the skin to age prematurely, as well as take on an unflattering sallow tone. Nicotine will reverse your anti aging routine quicker than anything else.

Wear sunglasses... This will protect the eyes as well as the delicate skin around them.

Take care in checking the products label and make sure they provide UVA and UVB protection.

Warm water over hot... When bathing choose warm water over hot. It is not as drying and is more natural.

Get ample sleep... Most of the body's repair and rejuvenation occurs while you sleep.

Follow a nightly regimen... Apply products 1 hour before bedtime to allow ample time to penetrate the skin.

Exercise regularly... It increases the flow of nutrients and oxygen to the skin, which will give skin a natural, healthy glow.

Choose products carefully... Everyone's skin is different, so try several to see which products work best for you and which produce an anti effect.

Never sleep with makeup... Sleeping with makeup is not natural for your skin. It may also have an adverse effect with your anti aging routine.

Aloe Vera can soothe skin that is red, irritated and blotchy. Apply directly to the skin.

Lotions for Sensitive Skins

Sensitive skin care involves lowering alcohol intake as well as not eating too much of spicy food and consuming less caffeine. If you want avoid sensitive skin every night apply Omega 5 oil based moisturizing cream on your face before retiring for the night and always wear uva/uvb protection. Avoid excessive variations in temperature. Control and manage stress as much as possible.

Facial Cleansing Nectar – is a lotion form of cleanse that offers extra nourishing and conditioning that benefits aging skin. A blend of Organic Sunflower, Safflower and Apricot oils make this cleanse especially softening to the skin. It is good for all skin types and is particularly soothing for sensitive and delicate skin. It is conveniently dispensed in a pump bottle.

Sensitive skin is that which reacts to some skin products and also shows signs of irritation or redness. Everybody has skin that is a bit sensitive and it is common amongst blondes as well as red-haired people as such skin usually reacts to irritants and turns blotchy or develops spots as well as rashes. Sensitive skin does not tan easily and instead only burns and has freckles.

POMEFA5 skin care is a unique skin care system that primarily uses the essential oils of plants for their beneficial botanical ingredients. The oils are distilled from plants that are organically grown or wild crafted.

Under POMEFA's strict quality standards, our products are hand crafted in small batches using herbs and essential oils in their purest form for an organic and natural skin care product. These formulations are equal only to what one would make for oneself if they had the time, inclination and knowledge.

POMEGA brings the purity of nature to your personal skin care, it is very good for sensitive skin.

Kindra's reflection in black and white

I love POMEGA5 products

Green technology

organic skin care

www.pomega5.com

The Road To Omega 5 Oil Starts With Removing The Seeds From The Pomegranate

These are useful links showing how to remove the seeds from the pomegranate

and other benefits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVIICAAKVN8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i62Up7NPNY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6sXe1-gLog&feature=related

and see all the useful data about pomegranates at:

http://technorati.com/tag/pomegranate

ans spa treatment by POMEGA5 at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEvf0JPxgew&feature=related

Omega 5 oil sites:

http://www.pomega5.com/

http://www.tzerah.com/

POMEGA5 and Tzerah -- your perfect spa buddies

Natural skin care

Organic skin care

Great Skin care

Omega 5 Oil Company Helps Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Are you dreaming of a `green' Christmas?

Well, even if you're not, you can enjoy the festive season by taking inspiration from ideas for presents, parties and decorations which won't cost the earth.

Presents

Try flea markets, antique jewellery and vintage clothing shops for gifts - you'll be giving a unique present, as well as recycling.

Indulge with a local, organic hamper made up from the local farmers market or give gifts of locally-brewed beer or organic wine.

Purchase natural skin care products such as POMEGA5 for him and for her.

If you're talented in the kitchen, you could make chutneys, cakes, or chocolate truffles as presents. Or make your own flavoured organic olive oil, adding dried chillies, garlic or herbs to a pretty bottle and filling it up with oil.

Treat people to a special experience instead of an item - such as theatre tokens, annual membership of a gallery or a weekend at a spa.

For budding eco-enthusiasts, `Save Cash and Save the Planet', published by Friends of the Earth and Collins, is packed with ideas on how you can save money and help the planet. http://www.savecashsaveplanet.co.uk/

Take your own re-usable shopping bags with you when you do your Christmas shopping. Around 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging are thrown away over Christmas.

Cut down on the stress of choosing presents if you've got a big group of people to buy for, by organising a `Secret Santa' - agree a gift budget which everyone must to stick to, pick one name each out of a hat, then everyone only has to buy one present.
Food and drink

If you can, opt for seasonal local food and drink. A traditional Christmas dinner uses seasonal British produce and buying your food from a local market or grocer helps the local economy and cuts down on `food miles', which contribute to climate change.

Buy loose rather than pre-packed vegetables - it'll help cut down on waste packaging.

If you're having a party, avoid serving food and drink on disposable plates and cups - they will just add to our growing mountain of waste. Borrow extra crockery from neighbours. Many wine shops lend boxes of wine glasses, if you're buying supplies from them.

Around half of the waste produced by households at Christmas could easily be recycled, but last year almost 90% ended up in the dustbin.

Instead of throwing away all those sprout peelings, why not put your vegetable leftovers in a compost bin? Around 4,000 million sprouts are bought in the week before Christmas, so there's a lot of composting just waiting to happen.

It's tempting to over-buy food at Christmas, but save yourself some cash by trying to plan menus for the holiday season. The average family wastes around a third of the food they buy.

More than 10 million turkeys are bought and 4,200 tonnes of aluminium foil are thrown away each Christmas - if you can't re-use the foil for cooking, make sure you put it in the recycling.

Christmas trees, lights, cards and wrapping paper

Last year we sent around 744 million Christmas cards. If all these were recycled instead of thrown away, it would help to save the equivalent of 248,000 trees.

Choose charity cards and wrapping paper which have some recycled paper content.

Try the Natural Collection's new paper range made of raffia fibres from the bark of the mulberry tree, coloured with sugar cane or banana. No trees are cut down to make it, as the fibres keep growing back.

More than 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper will be used on Christmas presents, using the equivalent of approximately 50,000 trees.

Indoor strings of Christmas lights don't use a lot of energy. If you really want to cut your energy use, you should swap your ordinary light bulbs for energy saving ones, which use a fraction of the energy and last on average 12 times longer. If every UK household installed just one energy saving bulb, they'd save over £80 million per year.

If you buy a real tree, and more than 6 million of us do, check with your local council if they will recycle it. Many local authorities grind the trees into wood chips and use them to mulch gardens or parks, instead of dumping the trees in landfill sites.

Try: http://www.tzerah.com/ and http://www.pomega5.com/

The Omega 5 oil vision -- now encpsulated in a real business

The business plan plays a unique role in the life of a business. It tells investors why this is a unique opportunity to get richer, it crystallizes the strategy for the company itself, and it gives the management team an opportunity to better understand what fiction writers go through.

Here are some simple steps, section by section, for creating a real good business plan.

The executive summary is crucial, for most readers will only read the summary. And of those readers, most will only read the first paragraph. In fact, no one reads to the end of paragraphs anymore; that's so ’80s, back before the Great Attention Deficit Disorder epidemic known as the Web. So, make sure the first couple of sentences are grabbers. Ideally, the first sentence should state a need so universal and so compelling that the solution proposed in the second sentence gets VCs to daydreaming about buying the property adjoining their Aspen winter home. The perfect two sentences read: "Over 1 billion men have at one time been unable to become aroused. Viagra will get them rock hard and keep them that way for hours." Unfortunately, that business plan has already been written. Strive to get yours as close to that as possible, however. (Hint: Check your mailbox for spam. They have this two-sentence thing down real good.)

Next, you need a mission statement. Most companies make the mistake of sweating over this, polishing each word like pebbles in a lapidary drum. Fuhggeddaboutit. No one reads mission statements or cares a fig about them because they are all the same: Our mission is to make ourselves rich. The rest is just armor to prevent some wiseguy VC from saying "Your mission statement doesn't seem very customer-focused," as if any VC ever cared about such a thing.

Now you need to describe the market. Here's how you do it. VC's want to make back at least 10 times their investment in no more than five years. This tells you where you have to be in five years. For example, if you're going to sell 20% of your company for $10M, the VCs will want their investment to be worth $100M in five years, so your company will have to be worth $500M at that point. This gives you the figure you need when doing the financials at the end of the business plan.

Now, at some point in the plan you need to be able to say that you are being very conservative in your estimates, and must include the phrase "If we gain a mere 1% of that market -- a very conservative estimate in our opinion -- ..." Therefore, your market must be on track to be worth $50,000,000,000.

How do you decide how much your market is worth? Easy. You hire an industry analysis group that agrees to write a report (current minimum cost: $25,000) that defines the market you're in and quantifies it at $50 billion. That may seem like a lot, but every market is worth $50 billion ... if you hit the right level of abstraction. For example, if you make necktie gloves that protect neckware from lunch drippings, the market figures might look as follows:
Necktie gloves: $1M Neckware: $1B Men's fashion industry: $200B Fashion industry: $500B
Your job is to find a way to pare the men's fashion industry down to a segment worth $50B. Perhaps you can go with "Men's Fashions (above the waist)" or, better, "Men's Secondary Fashion Industry" which is defined as clothing designed to augment other clothing. Let your well-known industry analysts figure it out. That's why you're paying them the big bucks!

Now that you know the size of the market and your revenues in the fifth year, deriving all the other financial information is a piece of cake. But here's an important tip: Make sure the graph showing the five-year march of revenues curves steeply. No one trusts a straight line since it implies that you know from the beginning what you're doing and all you have to do is execute. Where's the fun in that? No, since everyone knows that you're going to tank your first couple of years, show them as slow growth, maybe only 100% - 200%. Then, in the third year, things can really start to take off because that's when your "viral marketing" and "synergistic partnering" and "economies of scale" kick in. (It's required that you use the phrase "kick in" when describing this growth.)

You have to write a frank and honest assessment of how your business will fare against your competitors. Do that early on, then burn all the copies and wipe your memory clean. Now you're ready to write the "Competitors" section of your plan. If you have no competitors, then it will be obvious that your idea is just plain stupid. So come up with five, write them up dispassionately to show that you're a grown up, and then show why your competitors are so stupid and incompetent that they can't figure out which end of the toothpaste tube to squeeze in the morning.

Now bring back your industry analysts and get them to create a 2x2 matrix that puts you in the upper right. If you can't figure out a way to get into the upper right, hire an Israel industry analyst so your axes will read right to left. Where there's a will there's a way!

Now we get to what everyone says is the most important part of the business plan: the management biographies. But you don't really need any advice here, for if you're in the position to write a business plan, you've been lying about your career so long that you actually believe it.

Now all you need do is print it on heavy stock paper, surround it with Non-Disclosure Agreements, and stamp a big red number on it -- make sure you use a low number in order to impress the recipient with how important you think she is! -- and you're off to the races.

visit: www.pomega5.com

Omega 5 oil provisional patents will not be subject to new patent law rules

On Aug. 21, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published new rules effective Nov. 1. The new rules provide guidelines for filing Continuation Applications, Requests for Continued Examination (RCEs), the number of claims permitted in an application, identification of applications having common inventors and similar filing dates, and a requirement to supply “Examination Support Documentation” under certain circumstances.

A continuation application is identical to its parent application — only the claims are different. Under the old rules, applicants were allowed to file an unlimited number of continuations and continuations-in-part (CIPs). There are good reasons for this rule. For example, having a continuation pending allows the applicant to file patentable claims in light of newly discovered art. A CIP allows newly developed subject matter to be added to an existing patent disclosure, for example, as an R&D project progresses. Under the new rules, the applicant is only entitled to file two continuations or CIPs.

The USPTO has enacted the new rules in the name of “efficiency.” The Patent Office complains that too many patent applications are being filed and they cannot cope with the demand. In all other endeavors attempted by mankind, a burgeoning demand is considered a good thing. In any event, the efficiency argument is a red herring. Continuations are quickly and efficiently processed because the Examiner has already examined the parent case and understands the technology. Under the old rules, applicants could file any number of claims as long as they paid the requisite fees. The new rules limit the number of claims to 25 per application. In some technologies this may be appropriate. In other technologies it is impractical. Consider U.S. Patent No. 5,745,532 (a wireless transmission system) for sake of discussion. It includes 55 drawings, 44 pages of specification and 62 claims. In this case, the applicants may have needed 62 claims to legally define the invention. Under the new rules, this is impermissible.

The new rules will be applied retroactively to all patent applications that have not received a first Office Action by Nov. 1. Keep in mind that a patent application is typically pending several years before examination. According to the USPTO Web site (FY 2006 Report), there were approximately 800,000 utility patent applications filed in the years 2005-06. The average pendency for all Technology Centers was almost two years. Perhaps the USPTO should explain why it is “efficient” to force applicants to amend hundreds of thousands of patent applications to comply with the new rules. Of course, at some point, the USPTO will also have to process these amendments. This is an absurd waste of time and resources. There are suspicions that there will be an unofficial “slow down” at the USPTO until the effective date arrives.

In our economy, many new jobs and creative innovations are produced by small businesses founded by visionary thinkers. As corporations age and their visionary founders fade from memory, many tend to become unimaginative and ossify into risk-averse bureaucracies. Instead of being lead by “the vision thing,” they are often looking for the “next sure thing,” at minimal cost.

The Patent Statute was designed to protect innovators from free-riders. The new rules represent a radical change designed to prevent the patentee from fully and adequately defining his invention, leaving him exposed and unprotected. Commissioner Dudas admitted as much when responding to questions during a Sept. 12 Web cast. The new rules also represent a unilateral decision on the part of the USPTO to shirk its duties and shift costs onto the public in a draconian, heavy-handed way. It is truly difficult to identify any good public policy argument in support of these odiferous rules. The real question to ask is who benefits from these changes? In any event, the public has a maddening tendency to adapt to short-sighted governmental stupidity in unforeseen ways, causing unintended consequences.

Cellulite combating skin care -- the Omega 5 oil prelude

Omega 5 oil has been recommended by Woman's World as a natural anti cellulite agent, and in particular, this all natural product:
the healing cream by POMEGA

by Dr CJ Gupta

Everyone is plagued by cellulite, even the super skinny and sleek. Unfortunately, we are unable to control where fat deposits settle on our bodies. Nevertheless, those pesky fat deposits and globs of cottage cheese send us into an endless frenzy to discover the next best quick fix solution to our cellulite and fat pocket woes.But is there a solution beyond good old fashioned aerobic and anaerobic exercise and nutrition?

Is there a miracle in a jar? Or should you throw in the towel, pick up the phone, and contact your nearest cosmetic surgeon for an expensive, invasive, and potentially health hazardous tummy tuck, laser treatment, or liposuction procedure?

Before you throw in the towel or go under the knife…or even purchase some elaborate, synthetic beauty product filled with acids and chemicals, try melting away inches of fat, smoothing fat deposits, and reducing inches by using natural products.

Sea Clay

Sea Clay is extremely effective in removing cellulite deposits and burning fat, but more importantly it has the ability to detoxify the body of impurities and cleanse the skin. In spas and salons, sea clay is often used in body wraps. It is considered a cellulite and water retention miracle. Further, it is an all natural, quick fix slimming solution that can remove sometimes 1-6 inches of body fat in one go around. So why hasn't everyone jumped onto it? Body wraps are expensive and take up hours of time. If you can't shell out the $100+ dollars for a body wrap and would rather not be naked in front of a stranger, you can actually perform your own sea clay body wrap at home with Beauty 4 Ashes Christian Health & Beauty's Home Organix ™Sea Clay & Oolong Tea Body Transformation System. In the system, you get everything you need to perform your own body wrap in the privacy of your home –thermal clay, essential oil packed mixing solutions, and oolong tea-- and you can set how long you keep the wrap on. The system also allows you to mix the sea clay with oolong tea, which research indicates actually burns fat, increase metabolism, reduces wrinkles, and firms the body. It is a good option, works great, and can be used repeatedly. You should be able to get 2-3 uses out of the system. The all natural system will run you about $80.00 and can be found online at wwwdiscoverb4acom.If you are not up for a home or spa body wrap, there are additional products and treatments, some natural and others not, that available to reduce the appearance of cellulite, improve skin tone, and shave inches. Here's a review of some of the treatments available.Ionithermie

Body Treatments

Ionithermie, available in Britain, is an ideal treatment for those people who have lost weight but still need to tone and firm. The treatment includes a body scrub and pressure point massage; and thermal clay, essential oils and pads, which emit rhythmic electrical pulses. Ionithermie works the areas through the gentle action of a combination of faradic and galvanic stimuli, using the thermal clay and biologically active natural ingredients.This treatment, it is claimed, promotes inch loss, reduces fat and firms and tones the body. It will run you about $100 for one treatment.

Natural Cellulite Products

All natural cellulite products are reasonably inexpensive and give pretty good results. They are ideal for anyone who simply wants more supple, smooth, toned, and less dimply skin. The products include lime essential, lemon essential, and fennel essential, clinically researched and effective essential oils that reduce cellulite and firm the skin. The products also contain many other biologically active and natural skin toning and smoothing ingredients. The products can include a Peanut Butter No Jelly Cellulite Scrub and Peanut Butter No Jelly Cellulite Butter, which many who have used claim tones, smoothes, and firms the skin within a matter of weeks. These are also available online at http://www.pomega5.com/.

.This article is free for republishingSource: http://www.articlealley.com/article_184125_23.html

POMEGA5 Lotion Review

Product Review: Pomega5 Lotion
100% Natural Hand and Body Lotion

By Aktiv8 F8

Beauty products are one of those "must-try" items that always seem to reach my attention when in a grocery store, especially the health foods store. Beauty products are very difficult to purchase though since new studies are coming out each day stating that studies show that an ingredient is no longer good for the body. For this reason, I tend to stick to the natural ingredients that contain no parabens when I purchase hand creams. Pomega5: Oil For Life is one of those beauty products that has natural powers and will change the way you view creams today.

Pomega5 is constructed from pomegranates that have throughout history been a symbol for health, fertility and eternal life since it contains. Now, this does not mean that I believe this lotion will make anyone fertile or life beyond his/her years however it does make for a healthy glow and soft feeling on the skin. Pomegranates contain special antioxidants that actually have been known to help treat diabetes, hypertension gastric inflammation, as well as external skin diseases in Persia throughout history. In addition, it is a good source for healthy skin since it contains natural phytoestrogens.

Pomegranates support and maintain:*Skin Health and Appearance*Breast, Uterine and Prostate Health*Management of Menopausal Symptoms and Related Conditions*Weight Management and Metabolic Health*Blood Circulation and Balance of pH Levels
Pomega5 Offers:*No Parabens*Only those plant ingredients known for their restoring and nourishing properties*Skin calming benefits*Anti-aging benefits*Naturally preservative-free*No synthetics or perfumes*Dermatologist tested

So, when I saw this new healing cream in the health foods store, I was really excited. I had first heard about it from this years' Sundance Film Festival, since it was a celebrity free gift. At Sundance Film Festival, Pomega5 gave away a red silk hat box full of Healing Cream, Cleansing Bar and Pure Organic Pomegranate Seed Oil and other Pomega5 internal supplements. Usually I do not purchase anything that has been given away to celebrities, well just for being celebrities, but this product I really thought was a good natural purchase.

I took off the clear cap and pressed the top down to have a creamy sensation pump out. It really did have a wonderful scent and was only enriched with the very creamy feeling. Maybe it was just because I was thinking about it being made only from natural products but I felt like it was light on the skin and felt natural. It was almost like smoothing water over my skin, it was just not heavy at all. After the first usage I could tell that my $68.00 purchase was well worth the money. My skin was as soft as a "baby's bottom" as some people like to put it. In addition, after a few days of using the product my skin felt clean, light and has a special glow unlike after other creams.

Pomega5 is from extra-virgin cold-pressed pomegranate seed oil that is exclusively grown organically in the Mediterranean. So, if you are able to purchase a cream that will last a long time, I suggest this premiere cream that can be used all over the body. Yes, it does cost a little more than people are used to paying however a little goes a long way and the results are amazing!

Pomegranate Beauty finally made real -- try the new omega 5 products

Lovers of true green products are known to have been day dreaming

about great omega 5 oil products

for quite some time now...

Dreams sometimes come true

Tzerah and POMEGA are currently offering absolutely astonishing products

Do not rely on testimonials -- try the products yourself

make your own judgement

and more importantly

you need not travel to the Golden Globes in LA to purchase products

come and see us at
www.pomega5.com

www.tzerah.com

Your daily dose of antioxidants via Omega 5 oil skin care -- is it possible?

An article by Beth Hochstein, titled the “Promise of Pomegrnates” at: http://www.healinglifestyles.com/index.php?page=nov2006-spaandbeauty-seasonal hails the Forbidden Fruit Collection currently sold under the Tzerah brand.

What is the Forbidden Fruit Collection -- This is the first and only skin care collection based on pure organic pomegranate seed oil - a powerful phytoestrogen, highly skin compatible and easily absorbed antioxidant, and rare plant based source of Omega 5 conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). The Forbidden Fruit Collection includes an olive oil based cleanser, a cream, a lotion, a firming/lifting serum and an exfoliating brightening serum. They nourish and revitalize dry dehydrated skin, fighting skin damaging free-radicals and restoring natural balance, firmness and elasticity, for skin that looks and feels smoother, more luminous... younger.

In her words: Cold-pressed from an ancient Mediterranean cultivar, Pomega5 seed oil is the foundation of luxurious t’Zerah Forbidden Fruit Collection facial cleansers and rich, intensive moisturizers. Pomega5 Oil of Life features what may be the most potent part of this medicinal fruit—pomegranate seed oil, a rare plant-based source of omega-5 conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

And she adds that: Today, pomegranate juice is filling the supermarket shelves in step with growing appreciation of the fruit’s high level of antioxidants—greater than that of red wine, green tea, and blueberries. Recent clinical studies have caused many skincare experts to believe that your skin should also be drinking in the benefits of pomegranate.

“Pomegranate elements are some of the newer, more interesting potentially chemopreventative and photoprotective ingredients yet discovered in nature to be used for our benefit,” says Los Angeles dermatologist Vicki Rapaport. “There have been studies in skin cancer research that show that not only does its fruit extract block tumor formation in mice but it can enhance SPF factor which, in my opinion, is always a plus.

Does pomegranate merit this surge of popularity? Rapaport seems to think so. “I am not one of those dermatologists that jumps on every bandwagon,” she says, “and I certainly don’t advocate for consumers to spend their savings on potentially unproven claims, but there is something to say about the wealth of goodies found in the seed oil and the fruit extract of the pomegranate.”

Laurel House at http://www.healinglifestyles.com/index.php?page=may2007-spaandbeauty-beautyreviews points that that Ava Shamban, M.D., board certified dermatologist, and owner of the Laser Institute for Dermatology and European Skin Care in Santa Monica, California, helps demystify the slew of sun damage–reversing products by highlighting some of the most essential ingredients: AHAs exfoliate and even out skin tone. Retinol stimulates collagen production. Antioxidants (including Omega 5 oil, topical green tea and vitamin C) prevent free radical damage.

And if your skin has endured damage from excessive sun exposure, Lauer recommends Tzerah products as a favorite topical treatment that can help relieve, heal, and protect your skin: Tzerah Serum Grenade Intensive Night Repair Serum is enriched with pomegranate and perilla oils, plant extracts, and salicylic acid to exfoliate skin and soften fine lines. http://www.tzerah.com/

I have heard so much about anti-oxidants, what are they?

An Antioxidant is a molecule capable of slowing or preventing the oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation is a chemical reaction that transfers electrons from a substance to an oxidizing agent. Oxidation reactions can produce free radicals, which start chain reactions that damage cells. Antioxidants terminate these chain reactions by removing radical intermediates, and inhibit other oxidation reactions by being oxidized themselves. As a result, antioxidants are often reducing agents such as thiols or polyphenols.

Although oxidation reactions are crucial for life, they can also be damaging; hence, plants and animals maintain complex systems of multiple types of antioxidants, such as glutathione, vitamin C, and vitamin E as well as enzymes such as catalase, superoxide dismutase and various peroxidases. Low levels of antioxidants, or inhibition of the antioxidant enzymes causes oxidative stress and may damage or kill cells.

As oxidative stress has been implicated in the pathogenesis of many human diseases, the use of antioxidants in pharmacology is intensively studied, particularly as treatments for stroke and neurodegenerative diseases. However, it is unknown whether oxidative stress is the cause or the consequence of such diseases. Antioxidants are also widely used as ingredients in dietary supplements in the hope of maintaining health and preventing diseases such as cancer and coronary heart disease. Although some studies have suggested antioxidant supplements have health benefits, other large clinical trials did not detect any benefit for the formulations tested, and excess supplementation may occasionally be harmful. In addition to these uses in medicine, antioxidants have many industrial uses, such as preservatives in food and cosmetics and preventing the degradation of rubber and gasoline.

As the name implies, antioxidants are substances that are capable of counteracting the damaging, but normal, effects of the physiological process of oxidation in animal tissue. Antioxidants are nutrients (vitamins and minerals) as well as enzymes (proteins in your body that assist in chemical reactions). They are believed to play a role in preventing the development of such chronic diseases as cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Rheumatoid arthritis, and cataracts.

Oxidative stress occurs when the production of harmful molecules called free radicals is beyond the protective capability of the antioxidant defenses. Free radicals are chemically active atoms or molecular fragments that have a charge due to an excess or deficient number of electrons. Examples of free radicals are the superoxide anion, hydroxyl radical, transition metals such as iron and copper, nitric acid, and ozone. Free radicals containing oxygen, known as reactive oxygen species (ROS), are the most biologically significant free radicals. ROS include the radicals superoxide and hydroxyl radical, plus derivatives of oxygen that do not contain unpaired electrons, such as hydrogen peroxide, singlet oxygen, and hypochlorous acid.