Well, as one of the comments noted, the epidemiology suggests eating foods rich in antioxidants — broccoli, cabbage, oranges — is good for you, but eating antioxidant pills is not.
I can’t say I’m hugely surprised. Recall the antioxidant craze got started because (1) it was observed eating certain foods was good for you and (2) someone thought of a theory for why they were good for you, and the theory was antioxidants.
So maybe the theory was wrong, and broccoli and oranges are good for you for entirely different reasons. This can happen. It’s extremely difficult to reason successfully backwards from epidemiology to root causes. A fact those attempting to diagnose the causes of economic woes would do well to remember, but won’t, of course.
Maybe low doses of hydrogen peroxide work, after all…
I can’t keep track of what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy anymore.
It appears, therefore, that antioxidants are bad for those that already have cancer. All the epidemiological studies I’ve seen (and a few large-scale placebo-controlled trials, too) would seem to indicate that intake of antioxidants (often in dosages much greater than those in foods) makes it less likely that you will get cancer in the first place, however.
Many antioxidant pills are rather poorly balanced. It is the opinion of just about everyone in the supplement industry that the reason for the demonstrated increase in lung cancer risk in people taking beta-carotene was due to the fact that it was synthetic beta-carotene. And the explanation? Simply this: Synthetic betacarotene is only 50% effective at best, as it’s a compound with two optical isomers only one of which is any use biologically. And, rather more speculatively, large amounts of betacarotene inhibit absorption of all the other carotenoids.
Conclusion? If you are going to take supplements then take ones as close to the natural sources of those substances as possible. Which almost entirely restricts you to pills from specialised companies rather than mass-market pills from drug companies.
Well, as one of the comments noted, the epidemiology suggests eating foods rich in antioxidants — broccoli, cabbage, oranges — is good for you, but eating antioxidant pills is not.
I can’t say I’m hugely surprised. Recall the antioxidant craze got started because (1) it was observed eating certain foods was good for you and (2) someone thought of a theory for why they were good for you, and the theory was antioxidants.
So maybe the theory was wrong, and broccoli and oranges are good for you for entirely different reasons. This can happen. It’s extremely difficult to reason successfully backwards from epidemiology to root causes. A fact those attempting to diagnose the causes of economic woes would do well to remember, but won’t, of course.
Maybe low doses of hydrogen peroxide work, after all…
I can’t keep track of what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy anymore.
It appears, therefore, that antioxidants are bad for those that already have cancer. All the epidemiological studies I’ve seen (and a few large-scale placebo-controlled trials, too) would seem to indicate that intake of antioxidants (often in dosages much greater than those in foods) makes it less likely that you will get cancer in the first place, however.
Many antioxidant pills are rather poorly balanced. It is the opinion of just about everyone in the supplement industry that the reason for the demonstrated increase in lung cancer risk in people taking beta-carotene was due to the fact that it was synthetic beta-carotene. And the explanation? Simply this: Synthetic betacarotene is only 50% effective at best, as it’s a compound with two optical isomers only one of which is any use biologically. And, rather more speculatively, large amounts of betacarotene inhibit absorption of all the other carotenoids.
Conclusion? If you are going to take supplements then take ones as close to the natural sources of those substances as possible. Which almost entirely restricts you to pills from specialised companies rather than mass-market pills from drug companies.