BEIJING — Fear of mortality is one reason Americans spend so much on “antioxidant” products, including Vitamin C supplements and beta-carotene, which promise a longer healthier life. According to the National Institutes of Health, more than half of adults in the U.S. consume some kind of antioxidant product, spending $37 billion each year.
But a study conducted in China – where aging is akin to a national obsession these days – claims that antioxidants don’t work as billed. The study is published in the journal Redox Biology.
Rather than extending longevity, researchers say they trigger a stress reaction which causes the body to age more rapidly.
In other words, those expensive life-enhancers may actually be killing you.
Researchers discovered the relationship by studying how oxidants affected worms and human cells at various stages of development. Oxidants, it turned out, had no measurable impact on aging.
But introducing antioxidants disturbed the mechanism in cells that resists aging and as a result, the cells began aging more rapidly — “unnaturally fast,” said Chen Chang, the lead scientist on the project at the Institute of Biophysics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Chang and her team are especially concerned about their findings because of the widespread use of antioxidants among Chinese youth. “More and more ‘white collar workers’ in their 20s are taking pills containing antioxidants such as Vitamin C and tea polyphenols. They must stop,” Chang told the South China Morning Post.
But older people are also more likely to die faster due to supplements, they found. Chang recommended that antioxidant use in China and elsewhere be curtailed.
The Chinese study appears to confirm the results of a 2008 “meta-review” of 405 studies comparing the longevity of people that consumed various kinds of vitamin supplements with those that took only a placebo. That review, conducted by top medical researchers in Denmark, found no significant differences in the mortality rates of the two groups.
So far, none of these new studies has put a dent in the multi-billion dollar vitamin and supplement industry, which continues to promote the presumed anti-aging benefits of its products.
And there is little evidence that consumers are paying attention, either – or if they are, that they care.
But the evidence against antioxidants is mounting.
Another medical study conducted last year found that overuse of Vitamin D supplements was associated with a higher risk of falls in men and in women 70 years and older.
Apparently, Nature is sending a message: Stop trying to reset your biological clock.
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Don’t believe anything that comes out of red China.
I love reading all of the rants from people who think popping special pills (code name: supplements) is going to extend their lives or whatever. 98% of it is all in their minds.
I imagine far fewer deaths/damage from supplements than pharmaceuticals – can’t say I have ever seen a supplement with warning that it may cause death, brain damage, stroke, suicidal thoughts… (not talking about the weight loss or miracle ones -usually produced in China- but regular supplementation)
I would catagorize this as fake news – partially because the writer is promoting his own bias after reading a single study that goes against so many others and doesn’t seem to have been replicated. His evidence that the case against antioxidants is mounting is a single study on Vitamin D that he doesn’t bother to identify and the results of which don’t seem to have much to do with aging. This kind of sloppy analysis can cost gullible folks their good health.
This study sounds like something that was funded by big pharma that has is pharmaceutical precursors made cheaply in China.
The cited Vit D study was from more than a year ago and was, on closer inspection, proven to be complete nonsense.
This article is about another study trying to prove that vitamins don’t work. Without explaining it in detail it proves nothing.
Stewart Lawrence appears to be yet another shill for the pharmaceutical industry.
If the Chinese want me to stop taking vitamin C, then that’s all the more motivation to take it, and in megadoses.
I have never followed medical or nutrition ‘science’. At 64 years, I am not on any prescription drugs. I smoke, I drink, I eat whatever. Granted, I might die tomorrow, but so far have outlived the scaredy cats who take their statins, and obscess over cholesterol, and get tubes shoved up their butt every few years. I’ve never done that. Never had an annual physical. I learned when I was young that this body I walk around in is a phenomenal self-healing machine. I didn’t create it, and no doctor understands how it was created. When I’m done with it, it will die and become dust. I’m looking forward to what’s next.
Everything will kill you, apparently. It’s as likely that studies like this one are propaganda to keep people from living longer than they are truthful and sage advice from kindly Mother Government. The only old hippies I know are those who switched from drugs to sensible vitamin regimes and resist the pills that doctors pass out so freely today.
My wife and i no longer eat greasy Chinese food.
I do not use junk and science together. Let’s just call this junk. Try a low or vitamin free diet and watch what happens to your body.
Marine 1971, try not being the left’s useful idiot by equating science with third world countries.You’re apparently are unaware of the fact (I guess the TV didn’t tell you) that bloodletting was a practice initiated by the ‘scientists’ of that day. You might do a quick search on how our first President died. MEDICINE is great for alleviating pain and correcting emergent conditions. Science is not to be trusted when paid by big Pharma to push drugs on us when proper diet corrects most issues obese Americans suffer.
This is yet another study by scientists fearing the loss of revenue for their “research” (undoubtedly paid for by the pharmaceutical industry) to drive us away from healthy inexpensive alternatives to their drugs, with innumerable side effects worse than what they’re trying to correct.
The one thing science is best at doing is disproving previous science.
By the way ‘Marine’, I’m retired Navy (23 years). Joined the Navy under the Nuclear power program, so lets talk science, grunt.
Latest study: Scientist research studies cause severe boredom and suicidal thoughts or actions.
Taking supplements can be dangerous. In the case of Antioxidants, a healthy person overloading can result in an unnatural elevation of their autoimmune ‘headroom’ resulting in their body over-reacting to immune response. Examples are a fever going too high in temperature, or phagocytes attacking the body instead of infection. Guillain-Barre Syndrome is a possible outcome of being too healthy plus too much antioxidants.
…..But a study conducted in China…Done.
“. . . the person with weak Faith eats only vegetables.”
Romans 14:2
My Uncle, a Duke-educated surgeon, was a big believer in vitamin supplements–got me started long ago. He was a health nut, lived to be 96, and as of yet I have seen nothing to counter his opinions. It’s long been known, for instance, that people who eat certain foods, or smoke, etc., need several times the amount of vitamin C than most people who pass on those foods or activities. Reason being that certain things interfere with the body’s ability to metabolize vitamins; and the thing about vitamin intake is that the body simply discards what it doesn’t need, naturally. That’s the kicker…what people need in the way of vitamins is not well-understood. Vitamin D, for instance. What’s true, though, is that every person likely has different vitamin requirements–one size does not fit all–and there is no way that the RDA can be right for everyone. As far as stress in China goes, there is a lot of stress in their economy I’ve read, so I would look to real stress makers in their environments–high pollution rates, intense competition for resources by an enormous population, etc., before I’d start talking about anti-oxidants being contributors. For all they know, natural stress would be killing their people five-ten years earlier if not for their use of anti-oxidants–there’s some reason people are taking them–and their stress environments in everyday life would seem to be as good a reason as any.
Given the source is Chinese, I wouldn’t believe too much about the results. While some artificial vitamins like synthetic vitamin E is definitely bad for you, natural, full spectrum vitamin E is good for you. Many neutraceuticals are really a hybrid between a drug and a supplement. Carnivora is one that comes to mind, it supercharges the immune system.
The results achieved by scientists as always depends upon who is paying.
I’m not going to take medical advice from Chinese scientists.