What are the best antioxidants?
Sometimes with all the junk mail, spam, and other misinformation it becomes hard to sort out the facts and draw sensible conclusions about nutritional supplements. I thought it might help my readers to know what I take personally, at least as it relates to antioxidants, and why I believe these to be the best of the best.
We all live in a world filled with oxidant stressors: smoke , air pollution, trans fats, heavy metals, radiation or electromagnetic stress etc etc. Our body has antioxidant systems in place to deal with these stressors, but sometimes the attack on our system can become overpowering, and we need extra help...like the people that are tired, have foggy brains, are developing age spots on their skin, or their eye sight is going bad. Yet even when we are not overwhelmed by oxidant stress, extra antioxidants may help prevent some of the normal wear and tear that occurs in life, and with advancing age.
All of the antioxidant vitamins, the most well known of which are ACES (vitamins A,C, E, and the mineral selenium) can be tremendously helpful in our fight to stay young and healthy. They should all be part of our daily vitamin regimen. In certain individual cases, some of these 4 may be the most important antioxidants (AO) to take. But, for the average fairly healthy person, which AO are the best, the most powerful, the most helpful? There are 5 major AO nutrients, and one antioxidant precursor that most people interested in staying healthy and young should be taking every day. Here they are:
1. Vitamin C: detoxifies, protects and enhances collagen, helps immunity, and reduces cardiovascular disease. I saw a patient once who should have been dead already. He smoked, he worked with chemicals (insecticides) bare handed, and he had a lot of stress. Yet all he had was some minimal emphysema, and his coronary arteries were clear! His secret? he had been taking high dose oral vitamin C throughout his life. Vitamin C cannot be synthesized by our bodies. We must take it in from our diet and supplements. If you want to squeak by and avoid getting scurvy, be sure to take the RDA that's in a multivitamin, about 60mg per day. If you want to stay healthy, prevent free radical damage, and live longer, take at least two to three grams per day, and more when you're under stress.
2. Coenzyme Q10: There are thousands of literature citations which support the antioxidant powers of CoQ10. Plus this supplement improves the energy production within cells, strengthens heart muscle and kidney tissue and helps it function better with the existing blood supply, reduces high blood pressure, and improves the cardiac response to exercise. In post heart attack patients, it reduces the incidence of second coronary events by 50% all by itself CoQ10 is also important in eye and brain health, and may help to prevent Parkinson's disease. And for the millions of people unwarily caught on statin drugs, CoQ10 can prevent the development of statin induced muscle diseases. Be aware that the oil soluble form (oil capsules) are absorbed twice as well as the dry powdered form of this nutrient. A total of 100-200mg of a quality product should be enough.
3. Mixed (high gamma) tocopherol: The usual cheap Vitamin E (d-alpha or DL alpha tocopherol) is actually not that great of an antioxidant, at least not when compared to the gamma tocopherol fraction. For example isn't it interesting that when you look at vitamin E in most stores, it's certain to be one of the two less efficient forms noted above. Yet if you look on product labels, you'll often see "mixed tocopherols". Why? Because product manufacturers need effective antioxidant power to protect the flavor, or color, and to prevent oxidative degradation of the product, and they know the mixed tocopherols are more efficient.
The point is not that "natural vitamin E" is bad, but that if you want the best working for you, use something besides what you find in most multivitamins and at most health food stores. The gamma tocopherol fraction is by far the most potent antioxidant component of the mixed tocopherols. Get a quality mixed tocopherol product, or supplement your basics with a gamma tocopherol supplement. For most, going to a mixed tocopherol is the better choice, because too much of the d-alpha form can actually displace the gamma form, and keep it from working for you. I usually recommend 400 units per day.
4. Alpha lipoic acid: This supplement carries literally dozens of metabolic benefits. It helps restore glutathione, supports liver function, fights neuropathy in diabetics, reduces the oxidation of fats, improves mitochondrial energy production, reduces the age related drop in superoxide dismutase (an aging fighting enyme), and fights insulin resistance by promoting glucose uptake into cells. It also fights age related memory loss and cataracts. Best to take 200mg per day.
5. Tocotrienols (from palm, high delta fraction): While vitamin E is generally regarded as the most important fat-soluble antioxidant, alpha-tocotrienol has been shown to be 40 to 60 times more potent than alpha-tocopherol in the prevention of lipid peroxidation,and even more potent is delta-tocotrienol - by far the most powerful antioxidant of the entire vitamin E family. And while regular tocopherols have virtually no cholesterol-lowering activity, numerous clinical studies have shown tocotrienols, specifically gamma-tocotrienol and delta-tocotrienol, can reduce cholesterol levels, and it has the most anti-cancer and anti-arteriosclerosis effect of any of the other components of the vitamin E complex. The dose here should be 10-200mg per day.
6. N-acetyl cysteine: This is the absorbable form of the amino acid L-cysteine, which is the rate limiting nutrient required for the production of the major cellular antioxidant, glutathione. It is not an anti oxidant in itself. But it provides the essential amno acid required for its synthesis. Glutathione protects cells everywhere, but is especially concentrated in liver and in brain cells. Intracellular levels start decreasing dramatically in the 40's and 50's, and everyone in that age group, and especially patients who are not in perfect health, would do well do supplement this nutrient. The usual dose is 100mg twice a day.
I usually recommend that vitamin C be taken separately because the usual dose range mentioned above is impossible to obtain in a combination product. Taking the others separately is certainly an option, but an effective combination may well be on someone's product list, and would probably offer a cost savings. I know some of your favorite antioxidants may not have been mentioned here, but these are the ones in my opinion that time and research have proven to be the most valuable.
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