Antioxidants ar
e good for you, right? And exercise is good for you, right? So antioxidants and exercise must be doubly good for you. Wrong. Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times that for reasons that are not entirely clear, the vitamins short-circuit a physiological pr0cess that repairs and strengthens muscles, and they actually counteract some of the benefits of exercising. Reynolds tells us about research at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences in Oslo, where scientists divided a group of 32 men and women in two, and told one group to take 1,000 milligrams of Vitamin C and 235 milligrams of Vitamin E each day. Every person in both groups took part in fairly rigorous resistance training four times a week. After ten weeks, the researchers measured the muscle growth and the strength of both groups. The envelope please…. The researchers found that “the volunteers who had taken the antioxidants had not added as much strength as the control group. Their muscles were punier, although they had grown in size.” Read more in the New York Times.
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Sunday, April 20, 2025
This is a pretty disturbing find. We thoought that free-radicals were bad guys and we should eat things that would get rid them in our systems. Who would have thought that they would be found to be essential for the natural recovery process.
Maybe they will find that we need a certain amount in our systems but not too many to do all that damage we understood them to cause. Perhaps they will find that there are good free radicals and bad free radicals like good fat and bad fat.
It’s always confusing trying to sort out the contradictory results of various studies.
Though I’ve not yet read the entire New York Times article, on the surface of it, it’s hard to give much credence to a study that involved a mere 32 men and women.