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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Nothing new here. Science and studies have shown for quite some that taking potions and vitamins is not only worthless to ones health but actually is harmful. Most people would rather pop pills that eat whole foods-plant based.
“Science and studies”
You mean the “science” funded by Big Pharma?
Smoking good, tea drinking bad. Got it.
Vitamin A and E were found to be powerful antioxidants against RADIATION damage, discovered in animals studied after Chernobyl by Dr. Timothy
Mosseau, who has been to Chernobyl and Fukushima several times.
Please follow Dr. Mousseau on Twitter. He is doing amazing scientific work.
Also, we are all being exposed to radiation from past atomic tests, nuclear power plants (which release radiation DAILY during their DAILY operations), and nuclear meltdowns like Chernobyl and Fukushima.
They released radiation into our air, food, water, snow, rain, etc. and some of that radiation lasts for hundreds of thousands of years!!
See the amazing website ENENEWS if this is all NEW to you.
This article is way too vague = meaningless – does not specify what supplements nor manufacturers nor source of those tested. I know from seeing my own blood microscopy tests that Omega 3 + astaxanthin (antioxidant) made a huge difference in the structure of my blood breaking up huge clumps of blood cells. Glutathione is the bodies own produced anti-oxidant & people who are low have chronic issues like Parkinson’s.
Wait, wait, I lost track again.
Is coffee an elixir of health or deadly poison this week?
Butter, a healthy substance, was derided all during the 70s and 80s, in favor of transfats (margarine), which wound up killing many of our fathers to keep the cardiologists in business…
Coffee will ALWAYS be the elixir of health and happiness. Save this comment for future reference. When you have doubt ….just re-read it for assurance. BTW by Coffee I of course do not mean Starbucks.
I LIKE my one “vice”. Coffee. Give me coffee. =)
NEWSFLASH: A healthy public is the bane of 1) Big Pharma; 2) Big Government; and 3) the
HealthSick Care IndustryAll healthy practices must be discouraged…
Absolute nonsense.
Leftards are really weird. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown was convinced it was never going to rain again. All Democrats are climatologists, and bad ones at that. Now he has over-full reservoirs and a bad dam in Oroville ready to burst and put a quarter of a million people in mortal danger. He took money allocated 12 years ago, for repair of the dam, and put it into a pork barrel project that sane people call, “The Train to Nowhere”. Now he’s begging the Federal Government for money to fix the dam. Such hypocrisy we see from the Left. Their steady diet is the chanting useless mantras that are usually wrong.
I’m a firm believer is supplements. I take Raw Vitamin C, Krill Oil, Vit E400, and a prostate formula on a regular basis. Whole Foods has a large variety.
Supplements have literally worked better for me than prescription drugs. If you can see the positive results then you know it’s really working.
Vitamin D associates with falls? Maybe because without the vitamin D patients lie in bed all day. Need a lot more detail in this report to make any sense out of it at all, specific vitamins and doses. I doubt moderate doses of vitamin C hurt anything and maybe they help. Megadoses, well, not so certain about that.
Michale Savage says Vitamin C can save your life.
Oxidation is a natural metabolic process. ANTI-oxidant. Get it?
God laughs at our miserable attempts at longevity and immortality.Longevity seems to be more an attitude and spirit than something to be attained be rigourous disciple and control.
The main goal of researches these days seems to be grant writing.
Of course, China is famed for low-quality and sometimes contaminated consumables. Overall, though, I think whole-food supplements are the best choices. You get all the co-factors and a much wider variety of nutrients in their natural form.
All I can tell you is that at 12 years of age I was 5’3″ tall, weighed 110 pounds, rode a bicycle everywhere, and had no girlfriend. That was the year I started taking supplements. Twenty years later, I’m 6’3″, weigh 210 pounds, drive a Dodge Viper, and my fiancée is beautiful. You draw your own conclusion.
I always love when the interview some centenarian and they say they eat bacon and eggs and other “bad” foods/drinks daily.
In China, I wouldn’t take the supplements either. The NAZI’s figured out how vitamins works many moons ago. Whole food vitamins got results. That’s it. We weren’t made to ingest lab chemicals. I don’t know what these kids are taking, but I doubt it’s from some untainted organic fields in China. That place is a cesspool.
If there’s one group of people I trust even more than researchers who live off government grants, it’s the Chinese Communists.
Thank you for this informative and important article.