From Your Health Journal…..”A very interesting article recently on the WNKU web site entitled More Antioxidants In Your Diet May Not Mean Better Health. We have heard through the years how antioxidants were a very important part of your diet. Antioxidants help with the repair and renewing of cells in the body, strengthening our immune system. Oxidation of molecules produce free radicals which cause a chain reaction of damaged cells. Consuming antioxidants stops these chain reactions from occurring. You can find antioxidants in vitamins A,C,E, grains, fruits, and vegetables. But, in a new study, people who ate more antioxidants overall didn’t lower their risk of stroke and dementia in old age. That flies in the face of earlier research that found that the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables reduce stroke and dementia risk. Please visit the WNKU web site (link provided below) to read the complete article. I found it fascinating – as science, facts, data, health information change over time. One day, something appears healthy for you, another day, not so healthy.”

From the article…..

Antioxidants in foods are good for you, so more should be better, right?

Evidently not.

In a new study, people who ate more antioxidants overall didn’t lower their risk of stroke and dementia in old age. That flies in the face of earlier research that found that the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables reduce stroke and dementia risk.

“We’re seeing strong and clear benefits with specific antioxidants but not overall,” says Elizabeth Devore, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who led the new study, which was published online in the journal Neurology.

Last year, Devore found that eating lots of berries delayed cognitive decline among women in the big, ongoing Nurses Health Study. Berries have lots of chemicals called flavonoids, which researchers think probably have protective powers much like those of better-known antioxidants like beta-carotene, vitamin C and vitamin E.

Before that, Devore had looked at data from a long-term study of more than 5,000 people ages 55 and older in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The people were followed for about 14 years. She found that people who ate foods with more vitamin E were less likely to suffer dementia, and people who ate foods with more vitamin C were less likely to have a stroke.

But now she’s looking at the same people and finds that having lots of antioxidants in the diet overall doesn’t help with stroke and dementia. What gives?

Devore tells The Salt that she reran the numbers from the earlier Rotterdam study, just to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake, and it still showed that vitamins C and E were doing good things for the brain.

In the new study, the people with the highest levels of antioxidant intake were getting most of those antioxidants from coffee and tea. Evidently, the Dutch drink a lot of coffee!

To read the full article…..Click here