All stimuli that challenge the body cause stress. If intense, they can lead to harm, pain, and dis-ease. Even when stress is not excessive but rather repetitive, it can create an imbalance that manifests as illness or injury.

The increasing contamination of our environment and food introduces new forms of stress with harmful effects on the body, primarily explained by the heightened production of free radicals. Oxidation processes, which involve the transfer of electrons between atoms, are normal in the body. Occasionally, a molecule with a weak bond breaks, resulting in an incomplete number of electrons in each part of the split molecule; these are known as free radicals. As a normal part of its functioning, the immune system produces some free radicals daily to neutralize viruses and bacteria.

Free radicals are highly reactive chemicals that attack molecules crucial for cell function by capturing electrons, thereby altering chemical structures. They affect metabolism, hormonal activity, the synthesis of genetic material, and cell behavior. Free radicals disrupt patterns of electromagnetic energy in muscles and destroy protective fats in cell membranes, leading to fluid retention and accelerating the aging process. Many degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, are now linked to an excess of free radicals.

Although free radicals are a normal byproduct of cellular metabolism, an excess of these ions, resulting from exposure to electromagnetic fields or toxic chemicals, can overwhelm the body's normal antioxidant defense system, rendering it insufficient to prevent disease.

Free radicals behave like spinsters whose only purpose is to form stable pairs. Just as society produces a number of spinsters, free radical formation is a natural process that occurs in our bodies and also in foods when they are processed, fried, roasted, cured by freezing, or irradiated.

Free radicals are very reactive and unstable; they attempt to steal electrons from other molecules to form more stable compounds. This creates a chain reaction that produces new free radicals. Typically, the body can manage this, but if there are not enough available antioxidants or if free radical generation is excessive, cells will eventually be harmed.

The damage caused by free radicals is cumulative.

Cell membranes play a crucial role in cell protection, information transfer, and presenting surface molecules that act like IDs, announcing to the body’s immune system what type of cell they are and what their function is. When the lipids that make up the cellular membrane are oxidized by free radicals, communication among cells is disrupted, leading to deficiencies in functionality, including the destruction of protective fats in the cell membrane and fluid retention. This, in turn, accelerates the aging process.

These harmful effects of free radicals are being researched as causal factors in diseases that affect the nervous system, such as Alzheimer’s. Researchers are also examining their effects on the immune system. The body reacts to free radicals by attempting to repair the damage, but even its repair and regeneration capabilities can be compromised by these substances.

Degenerative and proliferative processes, including aging, can be explained by the aforementioned phenomenon known as cellular oxidation. If free radicals attack the molecules involved in cellular reproduction, cells can become cancerous. They can also harm the cells responsible for removing cholesterol from the blood, leading to the formation of plaques in arteries and causing coronary disease.

Just as the human body is multidimensional, so is the Universe we inhabit. Therefore, there are various kinds of stressors, and their impacts can manifest in one or more dimensions of our existence, as illustrated in Table 1.