"Antioxidants and Free Radicals.  What Are They – and how are they involved in so MANY health issues?"  

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  Many of us are now aware of antioxidants: they are in some of our foodstuffs, they are in some of our face-creams, the general tenor seems to be that they are A Good Thing. But what exactly are they? And what do they do?  

In May 1999, a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology was told how people taking Vitamin E supplements were 47% less likely to have a stroke. A recent study carried out in Cambridge, found 77 % fewer attacks in heart patients taking vitamin E.  Research by the American National Institute of Ageing found that those taking Vitamin E supplements were 41% less likely to die from cancer.  

  The antioxidant saga can still be rather confusing: For instance, even if you know free radicals are part of the story, you might be hard put to say exactly what they are. And why do we need supplements, as Dr Packer recommends?  

Every one of the billions of cells in your body has its own power plant, the mitochondria. Chemical reactions within the mitochondria produce the energy the cells need to function, and us to live.  But, like all factories, mitochondria produce pollutants. These are what are called free radicals. In fact they are actually “unpaired electrons”. In the process of making energy, electrons that should be whizzing round in an oxygen molecule escape. “A free radical,” writes another nutritional guru Udo Erasmus, “might be described as a sub-atomic, free-wheeling, loose-living, electron bachelor playing the field for a mate to settle down with and willing to break up other pairs to find one.”

  It’s because antioxidants are active in virtually every cell in the body that can have such a wide-ranging effect. 

The DNA in every cell of each of our bodies gets an average of 10,000 free radical hits every day, and the results of this constant barrage eventually show up as ageing and cancer, as the free radical battering leads to errors in the way proteins get copied from the DNA in the cell. We eventually experience these errors as thicker arteries, grey hair, and stiffer joints, or as tumours – cell growth that doesn’t stop when it should. One of the signs that an illness may be developing is a drop in the levels of certain antioxidants in the blood. People with breast cancer, for example, have about three times fewer than those without the disease.

Protection for Smokers, active and passive:

As we are only too well aware, free radicals are not only generated inside our bodies: Cigarette smoke, for instance, is packed with them. It’s now possible with sophisticated tests to pick up signs of DNA damage very early on, and smokers have between 10 and 30 times the damage found in non-smokers.

But - WHAT do antioxidants DO? The best-studied part of the role of antioxidants is the link with heart disease. Vitamin E plays a crucial role because it is fat-soluble and so rides in the lipoproteins that carry fat molecules in the blood. These are the “high-density” and “low-density” lipoproteins, often described as the “good” and “bad” fat, and related to cholesterol. The process of furring up the arteries that leads to heart disease and strokes begins with the oxidisation (that is, the free radical attack) on these lipoproteins. So you need vitamin E to keep the damage to a minimum, as it works to surround and neutralise the attacking free radicals. But you also need vitamin C… This is because of what Dr Packer calls the antioxidant network. “We used to think that antioxidants worked individually, but now we know that they form a network and boost one another.”

They have to do this because of the way they work. The molecules of each antioxidant absorb a free radical, but in the process they become a weak free radical themselves. The only way they can change back into a defender is with the help of other members of the network. That’s why vitamin E needs C to be present in the blood. Vitamin C recharges vitamin E and lets it go back to being a defender.

This refreshing process is probably how our bodies use the antioxidants we get from our diet. Plants have antioxidants, called bioflavonoids, because they also need protection from the free radicals that photosynthesis throws out. So we get vitamin C from our greens and vitamin E from nuts and seeds.

Much attention has been given recently to the benefits of bioflavonoids in red wine and tea (without milk). Packer believes they all work by refreshing vitamin C, which in turn boosts the heart protection effect of vitamin E. A visit to a local branch of a large chemist will find shelves of red wine extract and other antioxidant preparations.

Is all this necessary? Can’t we get all we need from a sensible, balanced diet?

It is obvious that it is important for us to eat a diet rich in antioxidants. But is there any need to take supplements? Dr Packer believes that there is: He writes,

“To get the amount of vitamin E that I think is needed for heart protection from our diet we’d have to eat 100lb of liver a day or 120 tablespoons of peanut oil.”

All the experts stress that when talking about antioxidants we are considering preventative health and that individuals must take responsibility for their own health when choosing to eat a healthy diet and to take dietary supplements in order to provide protection against “internal rusting”.

A variety of antioxidants are available from local chemists and health food stores or by mail order. We recommend that you take an antioxidant complex  which contains a cocktail of powerful antioxidants, such as A, C and E, and which includes ginkgo biloba and OPCs to provide added support to the circulatory system. The field of anti-oxidant research is an exciting and fast developing one, so do feel free to email us for information about the products we use ourselves. Contact Us

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