Antioxidant overload may underlie a heritable human disease
Despite the popular notion that antioxidants, such as vitamins C
and E, offer health-promoting benefits by protecting against
damaging free radicals, a new study in the August 10 issue of
the journal Cell reveals that, in fact, balance is the key. The
researchers show in mice that an overload of natural
antioxidants can actually lead the heart to failure. There is
plenty of evidence about the damaging effects of oxidative
stress, but "there is another side to the coin," said Ivor
Benjamin of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. "There has
been so much emphasis on free radicals to the exclusion of the
potential consequences of reductants. Our study provides the
first bona fide example of the role that reductive stress can
play in disease." Reductants, sometimes referred to as
antioxidants, are elements or compounds that easily give up an
electron to become "oxidized," while oxidizing agents readily
accept electrons. In the body, such oxidation-redu