Beside her is a cooler containing several bottles of spring water and a fresh fruit salad of watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew for lunch. Next to her on the sand is a pair of well-used sneakers for the 2-mile walk she takes along the water’s edge every day.

There are no wrinkles or stretch marks marring her perfect body. And she’s determined that there never will be. She’ll do whatever it takes to defy aging until the day she dies.

What are the odds that she’ll make it? Better than they were a decade ago. Back then scientists had already found the reasons that we deteriorate into wrinkles, bags, age spots, flab, and life-threatening conditions. The reasons were, and still are, genetics, disease, environmental factors such as smoking and diet, and the aging process itself. Today these scientists also know that every single one of these factors may be directly influenced and perhaps even altered by getting enough of the right kinds of vitamins and minerals.

A Chemical Blitzkrieg

Both the diseases that contribute to aging and the physical and mental “dam­age” that we associate with old age seem to be triggered by a lifelong blitz­krieg of damaging molecules that affect us on many levels.

Age Spots

These molecules, sometimes called free radicals by scientists, are sent zinging through our bodies by cigarette smoke and chronic infection as well as by the normal cell metabolism that converts the carbohydrates and fat we eat into the energy required to power our cells. Yes, just eating your daily breakfast normally produces untold numbers of these harmful molecules. There’s no way to avoid them completely.

Unfortunately, free radicals have the nasty habit of stealing electrons from your body’s healthy molecules to balance themselves. In the process, they damage cells and their DNA, the genetic blueprint that tells a cell how to do its job. And without a perfect copy of that DNA blueprint, a cell doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do. Yet biochemists estimate that every cell in the body is hit 10,000 times every day by free radicals.

Depending on how badly they’re hit and how quickly they’re returned to service by cellular repair squads, the cells may mutate or die. And when either of these events happens, it may initiate the underlying biochem­ical processes that cause many of the diseases that accelerate aging: heart disease, high blood pressure, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, cataracts, diabetes, and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Skin DNA

Some scientists also believe that free radicals affect the aging process even more directly. In fact, there’s a growing consensus that aging itself is due to free radical reactions.

The idea is that there may be an accumulation of damage from the con­stant cellular bombardment by free radicals. A cell gets hit once, the cellular repair squads come to the rescue and cut out the damage to the cell’s DNA blueprint, and the cell bounces back into action. But when the cell gets hit over and over again, there may come a point at which the repair squads can’t patch everything back together the way it was. So the cell continues to do its job, but not as well as it had been.

If it’s a skin cell, for example, you might end up with wrinkled skin rather than smooth, polished skin. If it’s an eye cell, maybe you just can’t see as clearly as you used to.

In any event, scientists have found that up to 40 percent of all of the proteins in an older person may be damaged by free radicals. Proteins are involved in myriad functions in the body, from guiding chemical reactions to supplying energy to maintaining the body’s structures.

And that, plus the fact that studies indicate that damaged proteins shorten the life span of laboratory animals, has led some scientists to suspect that free radicals may directly cause aging.