Anti-Aging Advice: 99 Steps to 100 by Walter M. Bortz, M.D.

One of the major theories of aging, discussed earlier, concerns the production by the body of tiny chemicals called free radicals. A free radical is an unstable and toxic result of your metabolism, one of the inevitable byproducts of your living in an oxygen-risk environment. Otherwise known as "molecular terrorists," these pieces of metabolic ash are produced by the hundreds of millions every day in all your body cells.

But your body is too smart to allow this debris to pile up in your cells and has derived a whole set of machinery to get rid of this unwelcome stash of oxidized free radicals. Unfortunately, your capacity to rid yourself of these elements goes down as you grow older. So the proposition immediately emerges: why not juice up the protective machinery by taking in compounds known to act as counterterrorists; i.e., the antioxidants?

Antioxidants are Big Business
Antioxidants are a hot item. They are widely featured in health food stores. They are big business. Why not bump up your protection by taking extra? A host of studies have been made about the intake of antioxidants--extra vitamin E, vitamin C, selenium, and so on--to prove that life is extended, or baldness retarded, or potency extended, and so on. Such efforts have drawn a multitude of the faithful to their support, including a large number of health professionals who are eager advocates for the use of antioxidants as health aids.

For every study that shows benefits, however, there is another study that doesn't. In April 1994 the New England Journal of Medicine published a large report on a research project in Finland, in which the antioxidant beta carotene was administered to a group of smokers. Not only did the compounds not have the hoped for beneficial effect, but they seemed possibly to be harmful. Those who took beta carotene had 18 percent more lung cancer than those who didn't. So clearly the final verdict isn't in.

The one piece of evidence that influences my perspective the most is that so far, the numerous efforts to extend the life span of experimental animals by the use of free radical scavengers haven't worked. The hypothesis of a vitamin E fountain of youth hasn't held up. I confess an innate resistance to the whole notion that something that comes out of a plastic container can undo the damage caused largely by decades of dereliction from stress and disuse, overconsumption, underexercise, and general neglect.

Bottom line:
The easy fix or quick cure goes along with the American psyche, but the drugstore is not going to be where you'll shop for health. You are your own best apothecary.

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