Fill your Nutritional Gaps

Unless you live in a cave, you've probably heard the term "antioxidants" - and for good reason. Antioxidants are critical to your ongoing health. Antioxidants are your body's cleaning crew. They go around cleaning up all the free radicals caused by stress, exposure to toxins and from your body's normal metabolic functions. Free radicals cause cellular aging.

Many fruits and vegetables are rich in antioxidants, but the assumption that you're getting enough of these vital nutrients from your diet may be incorrect. Even if you manage to eat the recommended five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables a day, consider this: The soil in most parts of the country is depleted of selenium and contains marginal levels of zinc, magnesium, calcium and other minerals. Nutrient-rich foods don't grow out of nutrient-depleted soil.

Produce begins to lose nutrients the moment it gets picked, and most of our food travels a long way - on average 1,500 miles!

Most experts agree that taking an antioxidant supplement is the best way to ensure that you're getting the right amounts of these free-radical scavenging nutrients. And research has shown that whether you're getting your antioxidants from food or from pills, getting modest amounts of an assortment of them is your best bet.

According to Lester Packer, a cell biologist and antioxidant expert at the University of California in Los Angeles, people need a variety of antioxidants to neutralize the different types of free radicals that exist. Packer says no single antioxidant is able to do the job of multiple ones.