Word: vitaminic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Fortunately, nature has also created chemicals known as antioxidants, which can prevent dangerous oxidation from happening in the first place. Among the most powerful of these is vitamin E, which is found in vegetable oils and nuts. In 1996 a major study of postmenopausal women showed that those who eat a diet rich in vitamin E had a 62% lower than average risk of dying from heart disease...
That doesn't mean, however, that popping vitamin E pills will stave off heart disease. Previous research had reached a split decision over whether supplementary E could guard against cardiovascular problems. But the study on postmenopausal women, one of the largest yet, concluded that the vitamin was protective only when eaten in foods; in pill form, it didn't seem to do much good at all. This result could mean that the vitamin works in tandem with some other, as yet unidentified, food-borne substance...
...Like vitamin E, the flavonoids and the carotenoids appear to act as antioxidants, keeping LDL and triglycerides from being oxidized by free radicals. But they do so in different ways, explains Jeffrey Blumberg, a Tufts University nutritionist: "All those free radicals come in many varieties and affect different parts of the body. So you need many different antioxidants to protect yourself at different levels...
...example, he says, vitamin E, which is fat soluble, is incorporated into the LDL or triglyceride particle, forming a last line of defense against corruption by free radicals. Water-soluble flavonoids, by contrast, can be absorbed by most cells in the body, where they can presumably take free radicals out of circulation. But so far, these are only theories. All scientists know for sure is that people who eat foods rich in these two kinds of chemicals, flavonoids and carotenoids, seem to have less heart disease--and it's not even certain that there is a cause-and-effect relationship...
...figuring out precisely which of the thousands of phytochemicals is most important, that is decades away, if it's even a legitimate question in the first place. Just as with vitamin E--and with the studies that debunked beta-carotene supplements as cancer fighters a few years ago--it may turn out that phytochemicals work only in tandem with one another or with other chemicals found in foods. Trying to isolate the "active ingredient" might be a fool's errand. Says Dr. Ronald Krauss, a nutrition and cholesterol researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab: "It's premature to interpret that...