Antioxidants: Pro's and Con's

Brian Quarton [OLD]

www.informaworld.com/smpp/section "Could it be that many are unknowingly counteracting training effectiveness through banal practices such as consuming an antioxidant-rich recovery drink after an endurance training session or taking a daily multivitamin?" The use of antioxidants to prevent free radical damage is under fire. A few of you will enjoy this.

Tom Glynn

Interesting article. My take on this issue and supplements in general is that, in the end, it's better to eat whole foods and not pills or powders. Nutrition as a science is still young and there is a lot to learn. I think when you strip something out of a food to put in the pill you leave a lot of the good stuff out. Eat your fruits and veggies!

mgraffeo

Very interesting. I wonder what folks like Mark Sisson and others selling heavy doses of antioxidants for big dollars to endurance athletes would say... :-)

Brian Quarton [OLD]

@Tom: I bet we see research into the timing and details of antioxidants. A few years ago there was an article in the NEJM about beta carotene, I think, and the incidence of lung cancer in smokers. Surprisingly it was higher if they too the antioxidant! Often patients will proudly tell me that, although they still smoke a pack a day, they take their antioxidants. They turn ashen when I tell them they have increased their risk.

@Mike: Most of that crowd is still talking about the evils of lactic acid buildup.

Tom Glynn

@Mike,

Interestingly I just went to a presentation by Mark Sisson. Huge meat eater, no grains. Didn't know much about his program until I went to see him. I'm no expert on nutrition, but my skeptic instinct goes up really fast when a non expert in the area (Mark) tells us the whole field of Phd's in nutrition have it all wrong. Mark with his undergraduate degree in some other field is an expert in nutrition somehow and knows more than all the registered dietitians. I think he does all his research on Google. Of course his ideas completely contradict a major study of more than 1/2 million people in a huge study by the NIH with the AARP providing the data. Meat eaters die earlier and get more cancer. We need our fiber from grains. See the CNN article on this here on the grain issue: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/14/fiber.lifespan/index.html?hpt=T2

When you pull beta carotenes out of carrots, you leave all the other caritinoids out. Maybe it's not the beta carotenes but one of the other ones, or a bunch of them working together. I think eating a carrot is a whole lot better than a vitamin A tablet.

I think a huge issue also is that most people believe that if a little use of vitamins and supplements is good, a lot must be much better. Besides, pills are easy, good eating isn't.

We've got a long way to go!

tom

pepe

I think Michael Pollan sums it up pretty nicely in "In Defense of Food" (and "Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Food Rules" - okay he repeats himself, but he's passionate): "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." I do my best to eat as much natural, unprocessed food as possible. I probably do more lean protein than "mostly plants" would insinuate but with the amount of work we do, you need the protein to rebuild muscle. My graduate work involved a lot of statistics, modeling, optimization, etc. From a pure mathematical standpoint, the number of interactions involved when you start talking macro/micronutrients, antixoidants, minerals, vitamins, etc. in any given food make it almost impossible to determine the key ingredient(s) and ratio(s) required to replicate positive results found in a study. Dieticians try, and lord knows the supplement industry makes a mint convincing you they have, but it is really, really, really hard. My general approach is to eat "food" (as defined by Pollan) as often as I can and only dip into the "food-like substances" (read any processed foods and all supplements- from Hammer to Infinit) when I'm racing/training and real food can't get me what I need without causing gastric distress. This seems to marry up pretty well with Rich's BAS approach to eating.

Full disclosure - I take a multivitamin, Omega 3 supplement and daily 81mg aspirin (which multiple studies have shown improves health - though none have been able to pinpoint why - Dad had his first heart attack at 43 and I'm 40 and not taking any chances.)

Brian Quarton [OLD]

Asker Juekendrop checks in on the subject here http://blog.trainingpeaks.com/2011/02/antioxidants-protection-for-your-body-or-brake-on-training-effects.html?utm_source=TP+Personal+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TP+Personal+Feb11

smtalbott

The debate about antioxidant supps has been going on for many years - especially in the "adaptation or not" area. It all basically comes down to "some" amount of antioxidants (not too few and not too many) helping to prevent "too"much oxidative damage so that cells (especially mitochondrial structures) can adequately repair. You don't want to go overboard with a-ox supps though (as this new article and many others suggest) because you want to have "some" damage remaining as a stimulus for adaptation. The trick of course, is knowing the right "match" between the oxidation (damage from exercise training) and antioxidant nutrients needed (whether from foods or supplements - and its a combination that is probably best for most people).

I'll make a note to cover antioxidants in more detail sooner rather than later in my article series on Competitor.com ("Performance in a Pill?) about dietary supplements for endurance athletes (the a-ox article is not scheduled for a couple months, but I'll move it up)...

Shawn