"in the simplest terms, maintaining life can be viewed as the ability to resist oxidation. Oxygen is essential to life, but oxygen is like fire. It can be very damaging and needs to be controlled by antioxidants, known as "reducing" molecules. Balancing reduction and oxidation-or redox-is the fundamental challenge of life. What's great about that word, redox, is that it shows that they are profoundly linked and that we need both. Once you understand this relationship, it leads to all kinds of new insight."