This question has come up after a recent medical segment on the Fox News Channel called ‘Ask Dr. Manny’ that comments on the benefits of antioxidants. Watch the following video clip first before reading the response below:

EXPERT RESPONSE

Matt Frevel, Ph.D. - Chief Science Officer for Enzo Nutraceuticals Ltd.

YES, you can! One can consume too much of everything, even water! The relationship of free radicals and antioxidants in our body should be one of balance!

I am certainly an advocate of antioxidant supplementation to ensure that this balance is stacked in favor of avoiding oxidative stress (free radical excess/antioxidant depletion). Although I have not seen any reports of someone suffering from serious health issues due to excessive consumption of antioxidants, it is theoretically possible to put your body under “reductive stress”. This is when your body cells have an excess of reducing potential, i.e. an excess of reduced glutathione. Proving this point, a research paper in Cell (2007, Vol 130(3), p427) reported that transgenic mice carrying a certain mutation (human autosomal dominant mutation in B-crystallin) that results in an overload of reduced glutathione (our bodies most important antioxidant) actually led to heart failure. The researchers found that by introducing a second mutation that lowered the level of reduced glutathione the mice could be rescued avoiding the heart failure. This showed that an excessive amount of our bodies own antioxidant, glutathione, can have deleterious effects on our health. Whether you can actually reach a state of reductive stress by consumption of dietary/supplemental antioxidants is not clear. However, people taking mega-doses of supplemental antioxidants (ie. >1000IU vit E, >50000IU beta-carotene, >5000mg vit C) have reported to suffer from fatigue, and this may be due to the body reaching a state of reductive stress.

Although it is today accepted by most physicians, and definitely by the natural health practitioners that antioxidant supplementation is generally beneficial for the prevention of many chronic and age-related diseases there is still some resistance to a complete endorsement. This is mainly due to some large-scale clinical studies (including the ATBC-, the PHS-, the CARET-, the SCPS-studies) which yielded the unexpected result that antioxidant dietary supplements actually increased the risk of certain diseases in the study participants rather than lowering it.

The bottom line is that it is important to maintain a balance. Is antioxidant supplementation beneficial for my health? YES! How much should I take? This is the critical question that is difficult to answer, since it depends on the individual and many lifestyle factors, like quality of the diet, environment, pollution levels, and exercise. Generally, RDIs are set very conservatively and probably to low to achieve disease preventative levels. I my opinion, a high dose antioxidant daily regime would look something like this: 300-500 IU vitamin E, 1,000-2,000 mg vitamin C, 50-100 mcg selenium, and 50-200 mg coenzyme Q10, 10,000-25,000 IU beta-carotene, 200-300mg alpha-lipoic acid, 500-1000mg proanthocyanidins (i.e. pine bark extract). Consumption above these doses I would call excessive, and should be reconsidered. The above example should not be seen as a general recommendation. Instead, I would recommend that you do discuss your antioxidant consumption with your health professional. Especially for beta-carotene, and selenium I would recommend to discuss dosage levels with a medical professional since toxicities can occur. Most important for your own individual assessment is that you listen to your body. You should feel better with your antioxidant supplementation not fatigued!