BBC Horizon says taking antioxidants results in a 12% increase in mortality, and cancels out some of the health benefits of exercise

[Cipher]

But for the general population, the Gluud research suggests that at best, standard antioxidants like C, E and A don't help stave off disease, and at worst are actually more likely to accelerate your demise rather than avert it.

An important thing to note though; avoiding deficiency of said vitamins is important for health. I do agree that antioxidants as a group are not a panacea like some believe, and that more does not equal merrier in most cases. I find these videos by Dr. Rhonda Patrick to be informative on this topic.

 

[frozenborderline]

But I think it's interesting how as a society we have all been unconsciously programmed to think that antioxidants are good for us — no doubt as a result of the many decades long wave of antioxidant enthusiasm sparked off by Prof Denham Harman's health and longevity ideas in the 1950s.

Even mothers will say to their kids: "Drink your orange juice, it's got vitamin C which is good for you".

So we all feel virtuous when we take antioxidants.

But for the general population, the Gluud research suggests that at best, standard antioxidants like C, E and A don't help stave off disease, and at worst are actually more likely to accelerate your demise rather than avert it.

So I found the work of Dr Christian Gluud interesting from the perspective of checking our unconscious assumptions and beliefs.

I know what you're saying. It's a kind of broad pop science idea that's popped up in many areas of nutrition and medicine and affected people quite deeply, a meme , one might call it


Probably all the more reason I ignored it for awhile especially since I couldn't fully understand the cellular biology mechanisms it was based on , so I assumes the exact opposite of the pop science idea was correct.

And ray peat talks about reductive stress being way more of a problem than oxidative stress

But somewhat recently I've been convinced oxidative stress plays at least a small role in me/cfs. Both that and excitotoxicity

There are so many clues these are implicated in me/cfs, and I think the odd stimulant intolerance many people get has more to do with those two things than it does with the autonomic changes and blood pressure stuff of pots ...

 

[frozenborderline]

That's very interesting.

If anyone wants to look up their COMT rs4680 and their GSTP1 rs1695 mutations on 23andme, just click on those links.


I can see a potential new market for designer multivitamins, where you upload your genetic SNP data, and the company sends you a jar of pills containing the exact supplement doses which genetic studies suggest will be beneficial for you.

Maybe we should all get together an develop an interactive webpage on Phoenix Rising where we can enter our SNPs, and the page then provides supplement suggestions based on individual SNP mutations.

In the context of ME/CFS, supplements which can help lower inflammation for people with specific SNP mutations might be of interest, as we tend to feel better when inflammation is reduced.

Do you think there are any consumer grade genetic tests that are worth the money

 

[Hip]

Do you think there are any consumer grade genetic tests that are worth the money

23andme.com costs around $200 I think, though sometimes there are special deals.

It's certainly interesting to see your SNP results, but it rare to find people on this forum who have made any substantial improvements in health from the info they obtained from knowing their SNP mutations.

 

[pamojja]

Do you think there are any consumer grade genetic tests that are worth the money

Selfhacked.com provides such a service: customized supplementation on account of genes, and if you want also from lab-results combined. If you don't have your genes tested, they also include that service too.

Since I'm not so much worried in the possibilty of disease risks, but had already chronic diseases most obviously manifested, I felt already busy enough correcting those. With no need to also start correcting potential future diseases.

I did however test theire labtestanalyser service years ago when it started. Oh well, from the 113 supplement tailored to my lab-results I already was taking about 100 for many years. So not really much for me to learn there too. And far from helping cut down supplement intake and cost.

 

[pamojja]

a meme , one might call it

By the way, already discussed here: The controversy of Antioxidants https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/the-controversy-of-antioxidants.80601/page-3#post-2287512

 

[frozenborderline]

rare to find people on this forum who have made any substantial improvements in health from the info they obtained from knowing their SNP mutations

Is this bc the information is not useful or bc people aren't interpreting it right ?

 

[Hip]

Is this bc the information is not useful or bc people aren't interpreting it right ?

I am not sure. There are a couple of free / very cheap interpretation websites that you can upload your 23andme raw data to, and these sites will provide an interpretation, pointing out all the SNP mutations you have which may potentially have an impact on your health.

One is Genetic Genie (free) and the other is Promethease (their report costs $12).

So there's no great difficulty in getting the data interpreted.


In my case, for example, I found I have double mutations (+/+) for a few SNPs such as MTHFR C677T (which means I process folic acid poorly, and may benefit from active folate supplements), MTRR A66G (which can be helped by taking B12 methylcobalamin) and SOD2 A16V (which means I have reduced superoxide dismutase antioxidant capacity within my mitochondria).

I do take active folate supplements (they seem to reduce my depression slightly) and get a good dose of methylcobalamin from Greg's B12 transdermal oils (which reduces brain fog quite a bit, I find). But in reality I worked out these things were beneficial for me just by trial and error, rather than basing it on the SNP reports.



When genotype testing services like 23andme.com first became cheap and popular, professional athletes started using them to see if the info could help improve their athletic performance. I remember reading a comment by one professional athlete, who said the genotype info was interesting, but was something that he had intuitively worked out for himself anyway.

In other words, genotype testing implied certain supplements would be helpful for this athlete; but he said he had already worked out these supplement were beneficial just by trial and error testing. He said that genotype testing just confirmed what he had already worked out for himself. Which he said was a useful confirmation, but did not tell him anything new.

 

[uglevod]

Antioxidants just forces your immune system to see less bacteria/viruses than there are really are:

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/dark-side-of-antioxidants.81580/

Also they help to spread cancer cells as a bonus(due to increased immune deficiency):

https://www.statnews.com/2016/04/13/antioxidants-diabetes-drugs/
Now, a study published on Wednesday supports the idea that antioxidants can fuel the spread of cancer cells. Scientists in China and the United States found that two popular drugs for type 2 diabetes, both of which happen to be antioxidants, goose cancer metastasis in lab mice.