Welcome to the ultimate health information Antioxidant site. here you will find all sorts of useful information about antioxidants. Your body needs to use vitamins and minerals in order to function at a high level. In order to gather these vitamins and minerals, your body needs to find them in natural and synthetic sources, such as plants and manufactured vitamins. One very important element of your biological health is the antioxidant.

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Many people take large doses of antioxidant vitamin pills, even though there is little evidence that large doses of antioxidant pills prevent disease, and there is some evidence that they may cause disease. Does it bother you that taking large doses of beta carotene, which is vitamin A, increases risk for heart attacks in men and increase risk for lung cancer in smokers? Does it bother you that large doses of vitamin C do not prevent colon cancer, and do not prolong life in people with cancer? Other studies show that large doses of vitamin E do not prevent lung cancer, heart disease or stroke, or that large doses of selenium do not prevent cancer.

Barry Haliwell of the National University of Singapore wrote an article in the British medical journal, Lancet, explaining why large doses of antioxidant vitamins sometimes prevent cancer and sometimes cause it. Every chemical reaction in the body releases chemicals called free radicals that damage tissue, which releases certain metals into the cell fluid. Antioxidants convert these free metals, which are harmless, to powerful oxidants that cause further cell damage. So sometimes antioxidants protect cells and other times, they damage them. For example, paraquat is a powerful cancer-causing chemical. If you give vitamin C to animals before giving them paraquat, the vitamin C prevents cells damage and helps protect them from cancer, but if you give these same animals vitamin C after they take paraquat, the vitamin C spreads the cancer. The paraquat causes cells to release large amounts of minerals and the vitamin C then causes these minerals to damage cells and spread the cancer. For this reason and others, the American Cancer Society advises patients not to take large doses of vitamins A, E, C and selenium.

Another reason not to take large doses of antioxidant vitamins is that free radicals kill cancer cells. Rapidly multiplying cancer cells take up antioxidants and use them to protect the cancer cells from being destroyed by oxidants. So antioxidant vitamins can protect preexisting cancer cells from being damaged by oxidants, to spread the cancer.

If you think we know all about antioxidants, you should realize that there is tremendous controversy about them. I believe that you should get the vitamins that you need from the food that you eat, and from sunshine. If you want to take recommended dietary allowances of vitamins, go ahead; that is unlikely to harm you. However when you take large doses of any vitamin, you don’t have the foggiest idea whether you are harming yourself, and I do not recommend large doses of vitamins to anyone.

For journal references on this article see report #9384 in the Nutrition section of http://www.drmirkin.com

Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in four specialties, including sports medicine. Read or listen to hundreds of his fitness and health reports at http://www.DrMirkin.com

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Clearing the controversy of natural antioxidants.

Contrary to what people believe, free radicals are not always harmful to your body, but also benefit it in some ways. Free radicals (which are unstable oxygen forms), when present in the desired quantities, help to fight infections in your body and also decrease the amounts of cancer cells in your body, It is only when the free radicals get out of control, start multiplying and are present in very high quantities in your body, that they start to harm it.

High levels of free radicals can lead to atherosclerosis, osteoarthritis, hepatitis, cirrhosis of the liver and even cancer. Thus, it is imperative to control the presence of free radicals in the body, which is where antioxidants come in.

Antioxidants are nutrients that help to lower the amounts of free radicals in your body by providing them with the oxygen molecule that they are missing and making them stable. There are five main kinds of natural antioxidants, which are:

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin E
• Coenzyme Q 10
• Lipoic acid
• Gluthatione

Together, these 5 antioxidants make up the network of natural antioxidants. Although each of these antioxidants has its respective benefits individually, their best and safest use is when they are used in combination with one another.

Here, I need to elaborate on the use of the network of natural antioxidants. It is the belief of many people, and some recent medical studies have also supported this belief, that using natural antioxidants can be very dangerous as the natural antioxidants have serious side effects which can increase your risk of health problems. However, what most people do not understand is that the problem does not lie with the natural antioxidants per-se, but in how they are used by people.

When people do not consult natural health care practitioners and use the natural antioxidants on their own, they typically take only one or two of the natural antioxidants depending on what specific benefits they are trying to achieve. If you take a high dose of any particular natural antioxidant without taking proper doses of the others, this is when the problems start and the antioxidants begin to harm you instead of benefiting you.

But, if you consult a natural health expert and then take the appropriate combination of the network of natural antioxidants, instead of taking high dose of only one antioxidant, then you will see that they do not harm your body but give you tremendous benefits, including protecting your body from serious illnesses and delaying the aging process.

Dr. Nabil Khoury is a medical doctor who practices integrative medicine combining allopathic medicine and natural health.
Visit his website Natural health and longevity bible to learn more about natural antioxidants.

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