Antioxidants & Aging: Putting Theory to Practice

    Antioxidants & Aging: Putting Theory to Practice

    March 1, 2019

    Natural products have a long history of traditional use matched by modern support from scientific research on safety and efficacy.

    The science of aging and optimizing health continues to evolve as theories are revisited, challenged and reworked, or validated and expanded upon. Varying approaches to diet, exercise, and supplementation have proliferated (or failed), but ultimately, people seek balance as they juggle personal and professional responsibilities with environmental stresses and toxins.

    Antioxidant theory is still evolving as researchers uncover new mechanisms and evaluate activity within the body. Truthful and responsible marketing must keep pace with science to ensure credibility of brands and the industry at large.

    In the 1950s, researchers Rebeca Gerschman, Daniel Gilbert, and others working at the University of Rochester postulated that oxygen poisoning has mechanisms in common with X-ray radiation and that free radicals are involved (Science, 1954).

    Their work paved the way for Denham Harman’s free radical theory of aging, published in the Journal of Gerontology in 1956, which stated “aging and the degenerative diseases associated with it are attributed basically to the deleterious side attacks of free radicals on cell constituents and on the connected tissues.”

    Since then, many others have advanced the field and scientific understanding of aging, oxidative stress, cell signaling pathways, cellular redox, telomere shortening, and more.

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