What are antioxidants and what is their part in eliminating "free radicals"?
Antioxidants are natural substances that may help prevent diseases. Antioxidants are nutrients, vitamins, minerals or enzymes that help protect the body from the formation of free radicals and the formation of degenerative diseases. Some of these destructive conditions such as heart, kidney and liver disease, arthritis, blood disorders, vascular disease, and cancer can be caused by free radical injury to the cells and organs. Many diseases seen in advancing age should not be considered part of the normal process of aging. Aging results in progressive decreases in the amount of health tissue in the organs, ultimately resulting in organ failure and eventually death. Antioxidants protect key cell radicals. They do this by giving up electrons to the free radicals, which prevents tissue damage and organ failure, protecting our pets from the diseases that are caused by, or worsened by, free radical damage. This results in a longer and better quality of life.

Why do pets need Select Full Spectrum Antioxidant Supplement?
To help defend against free radical attack, the body produces its own antioxidants. These are chemical substances that combine with the unpaired electrons leaving free radicals harmless and unable to damage the cells of the body.

The more antioxidants that are present, the more effectively you can halt free radical damage, boost immunity, speed healing and slow the aging process. The antioxidants naturally occurring in a pet's body are usually inadequate to cope with the amount of free radicals being produced. Through antioxidant supplementation, pets can live longer and remain healthier. Antioxidant supplementation is also recognized as beneficial in the treatment of many medical conditions such as arthritis, general debilitation, inflammatory or degenerative conditions, panosteitis, feline leukemia and cancer.

What are "Free Radicals" and what do they do?
Free Radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that have a missing or unpaired electron. They are damaging because they attach onto other cells in an attempt to find another electron to become stable. In doing so , they can cause problems to the structure of the cell to which they attach. Free radicals spin erratically throughout the body, damaging every cell and tissue they contact until they are finally stopped by an antioxidant or certain enzymes.

Free radicals accelerate the aging process. they are produced from normal oxygen metabolism within the body and from exposure to certain chemicals, environmental pollutants, radiation, smoke, viruses, bacteria, parasites, dietary fats, sunlight , and even the air that pets breathe!

Free radicals destroy cell membranes, damage collagen and other connective tissues, disrupt important physiological processes and create mutations in the DNA of cells. Free radicals have been implicated in more than 100 degenerative diseases/conditions.

A free radical attempts to attach itself to another oxygen molecule, "robbing" it of one of its electrons in order to stabilize itself, in turn, creating another free radical. A chain reaction begins, producing free radicals that spin erratically throughout the body damaging every cell and tissue they contact until they are finally stopped.