When you purchase through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
study showing the electronegative or null effects of vitamins supplements are so plebeian that it is surprising Dr. still find out these work to be surprising . vitamin are not as simple as A - type B - C.
The latest bit of confusion come along in the April 27 consequence of theNew England Journal of Medicine . Dr. in Australia provided nearly 1,900 pregnant char with either supplements of vitamins C and vitamin E or a placebo to see whether the vitamins would frown the risk of exposure of developing mellow blood pressure during maternity . It did n’t work on .
Go Ahead, Drink Bacon Grease for Breakfast
Surprisingly , the MD said , the vitamin mathematical group had a more or less higher rate of high blood pressure compared to the placebo grouping .
We have sex our vitamin
The degree of vitamins C and due east were big than those found in an ordinary multivitamin tablet—1,000 mg of C and 400 IU of einsteinium , or close to 10 and 20 times the recommend daily allowance . In an editorial go with the sketch , Dr. say that postscript at these levels should not be dictate routinely .
But weloveour vitamins .
Americans spend about $ 2 billion a twelvemonth on vitamin C and E , along with genus Beta provitamin A ( a precursor of vitamin A ) and selenium , agree toNutrition Business Journal . These are the most pop antioxidants , a class of chemicals say to heal just about everything .
The hassle is , skill ca n’t seem to support the defective movie book created by the vitamin supplement industry .
No wide-eyed movie plot …
Here ’s the patch , a struggle between upright and evilness : Rogue chemicals called detached radical roam about the consistence like brazen street spunk , smashing cellular walls and rough in up innocent DNA molecules , do cancer and the diseases of middle- and old - age . Their flagrant neglect for the practice of law would carry on unchecked if it were n’t for swashbuckling antioxidant swoop in on the wings of vitamin supplementation , disarm the free radicals of their menacing electrons and converting them into respectable molecular citizen .
But the body , it seems , is not governed by a Hollywood " B " hand . Free radicals are as honorable as they are bad , and too many antioxidant may do the consistence trauma .
It is true that antioxidant answer as sort of a rust protector for the body , stopping a physical process called oxidization . authoritative molecule in the body , such as those that form artery walls , become oxidise when they fall behind an negatron . Once oxidized , they become unstable and easily break aside .
The culprit , without a dubiousness , is the complimentary radical .
Free to put down
Free radicals are highly reactive molecules or single corpuscle with unmated electron wait for a match . So they slip an electron from the first thing they meet , perhaps a cell wall or DNA . As free - basal damage mount , cellphone can no longer perform properly . Disease sets in . An overindulgence of free radicals has been bring up in cardiovascular disease , Alzheimer ’s disease , Parkinson ’s disease and cancer .
Aging itself has been define as a gradual assemblage of barren - extremist terms .
Yet free radicals are necessary for life . The body ’s power to release zephyr and food into chemical muscularity depends on a chain reaction of free radical . Free radicals are also a crucial part of the resistant system , floating through the vein and attacking foreign encroacher .
H peroxide is a prime example of a loose radical . Your blood actually contain tracing amounts of atomic number 1 hydrogen peroxide , an national source scrapper . In fact , you could not fight bacteria without free radicals .
Good chance
How antioxidants workplace is an utter whodunit , which explains the contradicting results of very orotund and well - conducted studies in the past decade showing , for example , that vitamin einsteinium slow down the advance of coronary artery disease but increased the risk of exposure of a center attack .
One thing that subject area do expose is that a dieting rich in antioxidants , as opposed to addendum , is associated with lower rate of cancer and circulative disease . Richard Veech of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , whom I interviewed a few years ago , sums it up best , I mean :
" People do n’t want to exercise , " he say . " They do n’t need to feed healthy intellectual nourishment . They do n’t need to stop drink ; they do n’t desire to stop smoke ; they do n’t require to stop having dangerous sexual activity . They need to take a tablet . Well , good hazard . "
Christopher Wanjek is the writer of the book “ Bad Medicine ” and “ Food At employment . ” Got a question about Bad Medicine ? Email Wanjek . If it ’s really high-risk , he just might answer it in a succeeding column . Bad Medicine appears each Tuesday on LIveScience .
Related history
More Bad Medicine
