Network Antioxidants
January 31st, 2008 by Jeannie

I picked up an excellent book a couple of weeks ago at the drugstore that I couldn’t put down called The Antioxidant Miracle by Lester Packer, Ph.d. Dr. Packer is a scientist who specializes in antioxidants and how they function in our bodies. He is the director of the Packer Lab at Berkley, California State University, and who for the last few decades has focused on 5 key antioxidants that when combined produced increased effectiveness than when just taken by themselves. The network antioxidants include Lipoic acid, CoQ10, Vitamin C, Vitamin E and Glutathione.
If you are interested in reversing or preventing the signs of aging, keeping skin supple and wrinkle free, preventing cancer, diabetes, gum disease, increasing your energy, not to mention your sex life! as well as reversing bad genes you need to read this book. Even though it’s been years since it’s been written the information still holds true and knowledge is power and if taking antioxidants will keep you healthy and strong way into your older years then we all need to know about it.
Lester Packer goes on the explain the benefits of each antioxidant in the antioxidant network. His main focus was on the effects of lipoic acid and even though I won’t go into too much detail here on each I will touch upon what he mentions… sorry too much information to write in one post. Firstly, in order to understand antioxidants you need to understand their opposite side “free radicals”. Free radicals are in all of us and they are necessary - they can be helpful or hurtful. When free radicals attack we need antioxidants to neutralize their effects. Antioxidants are basically stopping the free radicals from destroying your healthy cells. Now since the antioxidant has stopped the free radicals and eaten it up it is able to recycle and regenerate itself with the help of other network antioxidants. I find this completely amazing. With age our body does not produce enough antioxidants to do this therefore it is necessary to supplement. Certain antioxidants are not even produced by the body such as Vitamin C so taking a daily dose is recommended especially if you are not getting it from nutritional sources.
Through Dr. Packer’s work, Lipoic acid was shown as being the most powerful antioxidant in the entire network - it actually helped to increase the levels of effectiveness of Glutathione, Vitamins C and E and CoQ10. In another post we will go on to discuss each of these antioxidants, their importance and how it affects the other network antioxidants. But I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Antioxidant Miracle since the information is so vast but easily read and understood.
Posted in Anti-Aging, Skin, Body, Health, Antioxidant, Books, Body Detox, Wrinkles, Vitamins, Vitamin C, Antioxidants |
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