Antioxidant Supplements: Helpful or Hurtful?

Do antioxidant supplements prevent disease?

There's no reputable study to date indicating that taking extra antioxidants, aside from eating a healthy, balanced diet, helps prevent cancer, heart disease, stroke, or premature aging. It's simply too early in the experimental process to make assumptions or assertions about the effects of antioxidant supplements.

There has been a hint, however, that excessive antioxidant intake can have a detrimental effect, but the facts about this are unknown at this point. Bottom line? Get enough antioxidants by having 5 servings of fruits or vegetables daily.

In fact, a diet rich in plant foods (containing phytochemicals, a class of chemicals including antioxidants) is often thought of as a way to help reduce the risk for certain cancers (notably prostate and lung cancers) and heart disease. For example, Lycopene (and selenium) has been linked with a reduction in prostate cancer incidence in recent years.

But, as with all the other vitamins, minerals, or anything else you take in with the diet, taking too much has its problems, also. At this point, the detrimental effect of taking antioxidant supplements is that you're wallet will be hurting.

What I mean is, taking excessive amounts of antioxidant supplements and going out of your way to get more antioxidants hasn't shown to have any effect on heart disease or cancer incidence in the U.S...So, don't waste your time or money on them!

Do antioxidants help with a strength training program?

When the concept of antioxidants crossed the airwaves, a light bulb came on in the minds of many fitness gurus and marketers. The idea is to help improve recovery times after working out.

After all, you're using tons of oxygen in oxidative phosphorylation (for the usage and production of energy) in your muscles. Does this relationship hold any water?

The answer is...it depends.

It's important to remember how complex your body is. The fact is that your body has a specialized defense system specialized to take care of free radicals before they cause any damage (namely, glutathione. But, as with any other system of the body, it can be overburdened with free radicals.

Let’s think about this. When you exercise, a lot of oxygen is forced through your muscles and into the mitochondria. Oxidative phosphorylation occurs with each molecule, creating a molecule of water.

Every now and then, this system falters and an electron leaks out of the reaction, resulting in the formation of an oxygen free radical. So, the more you train, the more free radicals you're producing.

So, by now you're probably thinking that you'll need more antioxidants if you train regularly.

Not exactly! Your body is a smart machine! In other words, a conditioned athlete has the ability to rev up his free radical-removing systems with increasing demand. But what about an untrained athlete? This is where overtraining may come into play.

If an individual suddenly chooses to run 20 miles after not having trained for months, there'll be a huge excess of free radicals formed (because of all the oxygen traveling through his muscles). This surplus can't be handled by his free radical salvage systems because his body has not been conditioned to handle such stress.

It's probable that this may cause more free radical damage and may be a reason to take an antioxidant supplement. But this is the only reason! You shouldn't be doing such an activity in the first place. Always prepare yourself for such an athletic event! Suddenly training at 100% will do more harm than good. This is just one of the many considerations under investigation by researchers.

Furthermore, antioxidant supplements haven't shown to have any effect on athletic performance, with the exception of vitamin E. But, even this is limited.

It's been shown that vitamin E may help increase the prevention of free radical damage along with increased oxygen delivery to athletes training at high altitudes. Again, vitamin E might help improve the performance of only these individuals.

Physicians have also used vitamin E and other antioxidants for free-radical-induced injury in such conditions as Parkinson's Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig's Disease). Free radicals have been proposed to be a major contributor in dopamine neuron loss in Parkinson's Disease, while a genetic deficiency of the enzyme "superoxide dysmutase", one of our intrinsic natural free radical defense mechanisms, is relatively inactive. Vitamin E may have some benefits for patients with these sorts of conditions.

Bottom line: Should you take antioxidant supplements?

Let's be honest. No one really knows at this point, but there's been a general consensus that taking antioxidant supplements is not recommended at all. This is mainly because of misleading terminology and uncertain health effects revolving around these substances. For example, there're studies that show both the benefits and harmful effects of taking extra antioxidants.

The term "antioxidant supplement" is misleading because the supplement you're taking doesn't really contain pure antioxidant, but rather separate oxidizing agents and reducing agents (a.k.a. redox agents). In fact, vitamins C, E and beta-carotene (a precursor to vitamin A) are, in fact, redox agents. In other words, sometimes they act as antioxidants (as in food), and other times they act simply as pro-oxidants (as found in vitamin supplements).

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