Stop Killing Off Your Free Radicals

It seems that every week something is discovered that contradicts a previous “health truth”. First they told us we all need more Vitamin D, and then they told us that too much Vitamin D is really a very bad idea. Ditto for Vitamin C. We were told for tens of years not to eat too many eggs because it loads up the bodies cholesterol, but now we find out that the cholesterol in eggs is the mostly the ‘good’ cholesterol and that there are proteins found in eggs that actually lower bad cholesterol levels—so now many people with certain types of cholesterol problems are told to increase their egg intake.

Well now it seems that the old ‘free radical’—that was supposed to be an agent of old age and was also accused of possibly being involved in the start of some cancers—is not the bad guy we were told he was.

In a nutshell, reduced to a single paragraph, the previous view came about because people with biology showing pre-mature aging were found to have a high free radical molecule counts; hence free radicals were associated with accelerated aging. But … what they have found out now is that those people were actually suffering from long-term heightened stress levels and it was the heightened stress levels that were the prime contributor to the accelerated aging—not the free radicals. Even worse, from what they have observed now, the increased free radical count is produced by the body to counteract heightened stress levels and is, in fact, one of the body’s defences against the accelerated biological aging cause by the elevated stress levels.

That’s it then. No more free-radical-killing red wine for me. I wonder if Black Label Johnny Walker increases free radical counts?