Health & Wellbeing

Overwhelming evidence now indicates that antioxidants play a critical role in wellness, health maintenance, and the prevention of chronic and degenerative diseases.

Antioxidants neutralize free radicals

Free radicals are highly reactive chemicals generated during normal metabolism and during exposure to environmental insult. They play a role in most major health problems of the industrialised world, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and ageing.

Free radicals constantly form in almost every cell of the body at an astonishing rate. Many aspects of the daily environment, from sunlight to smoking to smog, cause free radical transformation. Free radicals also form during the normal metabolism of food. Free radicals react vigorously with almost anything in the cell, and contribute to many types of disease. For example, if their targets are DNA, the likelihood of cancer increases. If the target is low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in the blood, the likelihood of arthrosclerosis and its consequences (heart attack and stroke) increases.

Protecting your body against disease

Recent evidence, both from the laboratory and from human population studies, make it clear that increasing levels of antioxidants in the direct lead to predictable, increasing levels of protection against such diseases as cancer and heart disease. In New Zealand our young soils are among the most trace element deficient in the world, in particular, iodine, cobalt, selenium, zinc and manganese. This means our daily intake of these antioxidants is also one of the lowest in the world. New Zealand also has an alarmingly high incidence of the many chronic and degenerative diseases shown to be linked to low levels of antioxidants in the blood.

Antioxidants work together to create optimal defense

Our bodies have evolved various antioxidant defense mechanisms that combat the constant barrage of free radicals. Some antioxidants are quite familiar as vitamins or vitamin-forming compounds: Vitamin E, the carotenoids, including beta-carotene, and selenium, these antioxidants must be constantly replenished through the diet. Each of these antioxidants has a specific area in which it is most effective at neutralizing free radicals; vitamin E, vitamin C, the carotenoids, including betacarotene, and selenium. These antioxidants must be constantly replenished through the diet.

Each of these antioxidants has a specific area in which it is most effective at neutralising free radicals; Vitamin E is in membranes and blood lipoproteins, Vitamin C and the suplhur containing antioxidants like glutathione are in water-soluble compartments. Until recently, it was thought that each antioxidant played its role in isolation from the others but work done now indicates that there is a dynamic interplay among systems. For example, when Vitamin C neutralises a free radical in a membrane, it becomes itself a relatively harmless free radical, which decomposes. However Vitamin C can regenerate Vitamin E, in effect "recycling" Vitamin E. There is a complex interplay among the defense systems, with the various antioxidants cycles acting to prevent cell damage and disease.

Evidence is quite strong for an antioxidant balance in the body, which tips toward disease if oxidants predominate, but towards health if antioxidants predominate. Furthermore, with few exceptions, studies have revealed no side effects to long term ingestion of high doses of the common fat and water-soluble anntioxidants.

Free radicals cause disease by breaking down cell membranes and decreaseing the body's immune response: antioxidants neutralise free radicals thereby decreasing the incidence of major disease. Scientific studies show that people who consume high dietary levels of selenium, Vitamin C, Vitamin E and betacarotene have a lower risk of cancer and heart disease, and may even have a greater life expectancy, than those who consume low levels. Those relationships hold even when other risk factors, such as smoking, blood pressure and lifestyle are taken into account. Situations have been studied in which free radials are generated at greatly elevated levels including smoking, and skin exposure to ultraviolet light. In every case,  free radical generation and damage was detected, and damage could be prevented by increasing antioxidant defenses. It has also been shown that combinations of antioxidants work better than separate antioxidants alone.

In view of the enormous cost to society of diseases that are related to free radicals, and the relatively modest expense of preventative education and supplementation, everyone in New Zealand should be educated about the role of antioxidants in health and supplement daily.

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Reference: Packer L 1993 Free Radical Biology + Medicine 15:385-686