High Doses Of Antioxidants Can Be Harmful To Your Body

Antioxidants are still selling like hotcakes worldwide, but have you ever wondered if they are really as valuable as the manufacturers claim? Is there no negative impact in its use? It has become a trend that people think of supplements as natural as the foods where they were taken from.

And since they are all natural their mindset is to take more for best benefits, taking more of the pill than the actual natural food products rich in antioxidants.

Nobody thought of this to be an alarming phenomenon because of the marketing ads that says “made from all natural and all organic products.”

However, an unexpected discovery about its overuse was revealed earlier this year in a study led by the director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Eduardo Marbán, M.D., Ph.D. It revealed that high doses of antioxidant supplements like vitamins C and E may actually do more harm than health benefits.

A serious problem being thoroughly investigated is the predisposition of supplement takers who overdose to developing cancer cells.

Their accidental discovery took place while they were doing laboratory trials of cardiac stem cells where there is about 20% of oxygen; the clinical trial was not a success because 9 percent of the cells were rejected because of too high oxidation process.

This is far from the human cell’s make up of only about 3 to 5% oxygen. So what they did to counter the oxidation process was to load on antioxidants on the same cells, only to be shocked by an unanticipated discovery; that the cells that were loaded with high doses of antioxidants developed genetic abnormalities that highly predisposes to developing cancer cells.

So there you have the answer to the question, is there no impact in its use. It should be made clear though that daily dose of antioxidants is not bad, what makes it dangerous is taking more doses of 10 to 100 times than what is needed.

Also, this discovery only applies to food supplements and not the food sources itself. It is still best to take milk, oranges, apples, blueberries and peanuts on your daily plate rather than food pills. This way you are sure to get the best sources of antioxidants.

This unexpected discovery paved the way for more researches on antioxidant use. So until clinical trials reveal more benefits of overdosing, it will be wise to take only what is recommended.