What is Oxidative Stress?
By Cyrus Khambatta, PhD
All across the internet, people are talking about oxidative stress and inflammation, in the hopes of finding simple and natural solutions to a collection of frustrating health conditions.
When I visit YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok in particular, I see many supposed “experts” trying to sell fancy anti-inflammatory supplements to reduce inflammation in the brain, cardiovascular system, and liver.
But what many of these experts are missing is that when it comes to your health, the most powerful changes usually don’t start with supplements – they start with the food on your plate.
Let’s Talk About Mitochondria
Every day, tissues across your body perform billions of biochemical reactions that do everything from:
Sense nutrients in your small intestine
Manufacture dopamine in your central nervous system
Store glycogen in your liver
Manufacture LDL cholesterol in your liver
and much, much more
Inside of every cell exist hundreds of tiny engines called mitochondria that convert the food you eat into useful energy, known as ATP.
But here’s the catch: if mitochondria experience chronic oxidative stress, ATP production becomes inefficient, causing a myriad of health problems in all tissues.
And over time, oxidative stress contributes to the development of:
Insulin resistance
Chronic fatigue
Weight gain
Brain fog
Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes
Heart disease
Many forms of cancer
Oxidative stress is strongly correlated with the epidemic of many chronic diseases, so it’s imperative to understand what it is, what causes it, and how to reverse it naturally.
What Is Oxidative Stress?
Oxidative stress begins with electronically unstable compounds known as free radicals.
Free radicals are natural byproducts of mitochondrial metabolism that occur in small quantities, as a result of the ATP manufacturing process.
When free radicals accumulate in mitochondria, they create a pro-inflammatory state. This pro-inflammatory state can be neutralized by the presence of other compounds known as antioxidants.
In small quantities, free radicals play a helpful role in stimulating immune responses.
However, in large quantities, free radicals can be destructive to the internal cellular environment.
And when the production rate of free radicals exceeds the cell’s ability to neutralize them, oxidative stress occurs, resulting in damage to DNA, protein, and lipids.
DNA: Free radicals can attack both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, leading to single and double strand breaks.
Over time, DNA damage accumulates and increases your risk for diseases including many forms of cancer, neurodegeneration, and various autoimmune conditions.
Mitochondria: When exposed to significant amount of free radicals, mitochondria become dysfunctional and less efficient at producing ATP (energy).
Damaged mitochondria in turn generate more free radicals, creating a vicious cycle that accelerates cellular aging, insulin resistance, and fatigue.
Protein: Free radicals bind to proteins, including enzymes and signaling molecules. This impairs the function of many critical biochemical pathways, and over time can trigger systemic inflammation.
Lipids: in the same way, the free radicals bind to proteins, they can also bind to lipids in the cell membrane and organelle membranes, resulting in a wide variety of problems.
In short, free radicals are highly inflammatory molecules that can cause significant cellular dysfunction if left on addressed for a significant period of time.
The Root of Chronic Disease Is Cellular
Chronic oxidative stress can increase the risk of developing:
Cardiovascular Disease: Oxidative stress damages the delicate endothelial lining of blood vessels, promoting plaque formation, arterial stiffness, and high blood pressure.
Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Resistance: Mitochondrial dysfunction impairs your ability to process glucose efficiently, causing blood sugar to rise and insulin signaling to become inefficient.
Autoimmune Conditions: Misfolded proteins, DNA fragments, and chronic immune activation can increase the risk for conditions like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic inflammation.
How Refined Foods Fuel the Fire: Sugar, Oil, and Excess Fatty Acids
To truly understand how nutrition affects your health, it’s helpful to understand what happens after you eat.
When you consume highly refined foods, including cookies, crackers, chips, sodas, sugar sweetened beverages, pretzels, pastries and more, you’re not only eating empty calories…
You’re creating an internal metabolic storm that generates mitochondrial free radicals, setting the stage for chronic inflammation and chronic disease.
Here’s how it works:
Refined Glucose and Fructose: When you eat refined sugar, it rapidly floods your blood after you eat a meal, which can overwhelm your liver with a rapid influx of glucose. Liver mitochondria are forced to work in overdrive to oxidize a rapid surge of energy, which causes them to generate free radicals.
Saturated Fat: Foods high in saturated fat-rich can cause extensive mitochondrial damage, and promote insulin resistance. The breakdown products of saturated fats include lipid peroxides and aldehydes, which directly damage mitochondrial membranes, proteins, and DNA.
Excess Fatty Acids: When dietary fat exceeds your metabolic capacity, especially saturated fats and omega-6-rich oils (like soybean, corn, or sunflower oil), fat begins to accumulate inside cells where it doesn’t belong. This promotes a condition known as lipotoxicity, which damages mitochondria, impairs insulin signaling, and produces additional free radicals.
Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs): Refined sugars and fats also accelerate the formation of AGEs, compounds that bind to proteins and make them stiff, dysfunctional, and pro-inflammatory. AGEs are strongly linked to complications in diabetes, atherosclerosis, kidney disease, and aging.
In short, when you eat a meal loaded with refined sugar, oil, and animal fats, you’re flipping the cellular switch toward dysfunction, oxidative stress, and inflammation.
Your mitochondria slow down.
Your immune system goes on alert.
And your long-term risk for chronic disease climbs—one bite at a time.
Why Nutrition Matters More Than You Think
The good news? You can flip that switch in the opposite direction - and cells will thank you fast.
Whole, fiber-rich, antioxidant-packed foods are the antidote. They absorb slowly, burn cleanly, and activate built-in repair systems that neutralize free radicals quickly.
Every time you eat a nutrient-dense meal, you’re eating powerful antioxidant compounds with powerful disease-fighting properties.
Whole food, plant-based nutrition is uniquely powerful because it addresses the root cause of cellular dysfunction.
Antioxidants like vitamin C, vitamin E, and polyphenols neutralize free radicals before they have a chance to cause extensive damage.
Fiber increases microbiome diversity, which then increases the production of anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids
Phytochemicals from greens, berries, legumes, and herbs activate specific genes that promote DNA repair
You Can Reverse the Damage
At Evolution Health, we focus on nutrition and lifestyle strategies that heal at the cellular level. Whether you’re managing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, excess weight, or brain fog—these symptoms are downstream effects of upstream cellular dysfunction.
You don’t need a pill to fix this. You need a new foundation.
By reducing oxidative stress and calming chronic inflammation through intentional dietary and lifestyle habits, you can give tissues the signal to neutralize inflammation with every bite.
How We Can Help You
If you’re tired, inflamed, or stuck in a cycle of chronic inflammation, your body is asking for change.
We’re here to guide you, step by step, with evidence-based nutrition, movement, mindset, and a proven coaching framework.
Step 1: Listen to this episode of the Green Glow Lifestyle Podcast about mitochondrial health.
Step 2: Join a personalized coaching program that’s guaranteed to blow your mind.
We help 35-65 year olds who are battling inflammation-related health issues like high blood glucose, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and excess weight gain, who are:
Dreaming of having more energy on a daily basis
Frustrated by erratic blood glucose that won’t behave
Frustrated by high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol that won’t come down
Frustrated that they can’t lose weight and keep it off permanently
Afraid of eating carbs in any form
Exhausted from hopping from one diet trend to another
Sick of the side effects of being on the “medication train to nowhere”
Tired of feeling the frustrating effects of age
Seeking a scientifically proven system that actually delivers results
Ready to take control of their health once and for all
If this sounds like you, click here to book a call to speak with us today.
