Science versus Antioxidants

[Guest guest]

From the blogsite of one of my very favorite alternative health voices, Jon Barron.http://www.jonbarron.org/blog_published/2007/05/science_vs_antioxidants.htmlScience vs. Antioxidants

 

Posted on: May 18, 2007 5:27 AM

 

The current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI)

contains the result of a study that is likely to get major play in the

press. The study used questionnaires to track some 300,000 men over a

five year period in an attempt to analyze the effect of

multivitamin/antioxidant supplements on prostate cancer.

 

The study reported that there was no association between

multivitamin use and the risk of actually getting prostate cancer.

However, the study found a 32% increased risk of advanced and fatal

prostate cancers among men who reported "excessive" use of

multivitamins (more than seven times per week) when compared with men

who never took supplements. The association between excessive

multivitamin use and advanced prostate cancer was highest in men with a

family history of prostate cancer or who also took individual selenium,

beta-carotene, or zinc supplements.

The study concluded that taking multivitamin/antioxidant supplements

"is a concern for men because of a possible increased risk of advanced

and fatal prostate cancers, and the subject merits further evaluation."

An accompanying editorial

in the same issue of the JNCI notes that these results "add to the

growing evidence that questions the beneficial value of antioxidant

vitamin pills in generally well-nourished populations and underscore

the possibility that antioxidant supplements could have unintended

consequences for our health." The editorial then goes on to state that we

need to, "Test for benefits and harms of supplements before they come

to the market. This would entail fair testing of all commercial

ingested products with claimed health benefits, as we intend to do with

pharmaceutical drugs."

There it is. The gauntlet is laid down. Functional foods and

supplements should be treated as drugs. I don't have time to get into

the absurdity of that premise in this blog. Suffice it to say, that

this would put all functional foods and supplements in violation of

virtually every country's laws governing supplements, and would

automatically mandate that all supplements and functional foods be

mandated as pharmaceutical drugs. But for now let's get back to the

study.

The study and the accompanying editorial posited several theories to explain the results.

Free radicals in moderate concentrations actually play a

positive role in the reactions by which the body gets rid of unwanted

cells. By taking antioxidant supplements, you decrease free radicals,

which may interfere with essential defensive mechanisms for ridding

your body of damaged cells -- including those that are precancerous and

cancerous. In other words, supplements cause harm by undermining the

natural physiologic balance. The amounts of antioxidants

that may afford protection are not known and may differ among

individuals. Antioxidants could be beneficial in people with high

levels of free radicals but be harmful in people with lower levels."It is important to keep in mind that antioxidant supplements are synthetic and possess prooxidant properties as well."

Let's quickly address these theories, and then cut to the chase.

One. Yes, free radicals do play a role in getting

rid of unwanted cells. In fact, a primary effect of chemotherapy is to

monumentally increase free radical production, with the idea being that

those free radicals kill the cancer cells -- before they also destroy

the body's healthy cells. The body's preferred method of getting rid of

cancer cells is through the immune system, not through free radical

production. Also, the premise that normal diet is physiologically

balanced and that supplements are unbalanced is based on what norm?

Take selenium, for example. Selenium is hardly constant in food --

appearing only in foods grown in selenium rich soils. Brazil nuts can

contain anywhere from 0 to 550 micrograms per ounce. That's anywhere

from 0 to 2/3 of the DV for selenium per ounce, depending on the soil

the nuts are grown in. Where's the norm in that? In point of fact,

selenium was more prevalent in food 100 years ago than in today's food

because of mineral depletion in our farm soils. So which physiological

norm are we talking about -- today, or 100 years ago?

Two. The body only utilizes about 3,000-5,000 ORAC

of antioxidants per day. Taking more than that of natural antioxidants

has minimal impact unless you have excessively high levels of free

radicals to deal with.

Three: Here we hit the crux of the matter. To quote from the editorial, "It is important to keep in mind that antioxidant supplements are synthetic."

Oh really!!!!! And what antioxidants are we talking about here?

Synthetic vitamin E, synthetic beta-carotene, elemental selenium? If

that's what was being evaluated, then no wonder they got those results.

This is the crux of the problem. The people conducting these studies (the same people the editorial says should be conducting "fair

testing on all ingested products with claimed health benefits" don't

have the slightest idea what they're doing. They don't understand the

difference between supplements. They think one vitamin E is like the

next -- that synthetic dl-alpha tocopherol is the same as a natural

full complex E. The think elemental selenium is the same as organically

bound selenium. They think that beta-carotene made from acetylene gas

is the same as naturally sourced beta-carotene accompanied by a full

range of supporting carotenoids. They are wrong.

Not differentiating between grades of supplements when testing them

is like putting regular gas in a Ferrari and claiming that gas is bad

for cars because the results prove that it makes the cars ping and

knock.

That's nonsense, and so is the study. In fact, it's probably worth

mentioning that for Goran Bjelakovic, co-author of the editorial, this

is his second bite of the apple in just the last couple of months. In

March, JAMA published his study concluding that treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality. Kind of makes you wonder what the agenda is here -- and who's paying for these studies?

Note: For a complete discussion on how to validly test antioxidants, check out http://www.jonbarron.org/newsletters/04/3-15-2004.php.

[Guest guest]

Synthetic supplements are ultimitly derived from crude oil. Ya think

it will cause an increase in cancer? How is it that all these bigwig

PhDs can't see it? Or can they, but they know the general population

and the MDs who have been trained not to think won't? I knew exactly

what was going on just reading the headline.

[Guest guest]

Anything synthetic and/or altered by man is liable to cause problems

in my opinion - we have seen it time and again with FDA approved

medications (where fully 95% of the over 15,000 approved drugs have

side effects) and are now seeing the tip of the iceberg with

genetically modified food crops.

 

What is happening now is that more and more people are turning away

from mainstream medicine and synthetic drugs after a half century of

broken promises and largely ineffective and dangerous drugs and

treatments that treat only symptoms and fail to address the underlying

causes of serious illness and disease. That threatens the profit of a

multi trillion dollar empire and the response we are seeing is flawed

studies about the safer, more effective and less expensive natural

competition as well as planted articles by their propaganda machine,

calls for actions to control supplements and natural healing and

behind the scene maneuvers to do the same.

 

In the flawed studies about anti-oxidants, they take synthetic

anti-oxidants and isolated compounds instead of the true natural

anti-oxidants with synergistic supporting compounds and of course they

get inferior results, which they then use to label the real natural

anti-oxidants as ineffective and/or dangerous.

 

What they are really proving is that synthetics are inferior to nature

- the same as their drugs!

 

 

oleander soup , " William " <greenwaves11 wrote:

>

> Synthetic supplements are ultimitly derived from crude oil. Ya think

> it will cause an increase in cancer? How is it that all these bigwig

> PhDs can't see it? Or can they, but they know the general population

> and the MDs who have been trained not to think won't? I knew exactly

> what was going on just reading the headline.

>