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Using spices eaten in the Mediterranean diet as natural antioxidants is a good way forward for the food industry, given the beneficial health effects of these products. This has been shown by researchers from the Miguel Hernández University (UMH), who have put the clove in first place. Researchers from the Miguel Hernández University have identified cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) as the best antioxidant spice, due to the fact they contain high levels of phenolic compounds, as well as having other properties. "Out of the five antioxidant properties tested, cloves had the highest capacity to give off hydrogen, reduced lipid peroxidation well,...

Scientists have confirmed that the healthful substances found in green tea — renowned for their powerful antioxidant and disease-fighting properties — do penetrate into tissues of the eye. Their new report, the first documenting how the lens, retina, and other eye tissues absorb these substances, raises the possibility that green tea may protect against glaucoma and other common eye diseases. It appears in ACS's bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Chi Pui Pang and colleagues point out that so-called green tea "catechins" have been among a number of antioxidants thought capable of protecting the eye. Those include vitamin C,...

Antioxidants increasingly have been praised for their benefits against disease and aging, but recent studies at Kansas State University show that they also can cause harm. Researchers in K-State's Cardiorespiratory Exercise Laboratory have been studying how to improve oxygen delivery to the skeletal muscle during physical activity by using antioxidants, which are nutrients in foods that can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to the body. Their findings show that sometimes antioxidants can impair muscle function. "Antioxidant is one of those buzz words right now," said Steven Copp, a doctoral student in anatomy and physiology from Manhattan and a researcher...

New research in the FASEB Journal opens the door for new drugs that could prevent severe flu-related lung damage As the nation copes with a shortage of vaccines for H1N1 influenza, a team of Alabama researchers have raised hopes that they have found an Achilles' heel for all strains of the flu—antioxidants. In an article appearing in the November 2009 print issue of the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) they show that antioxidants—the same substances found in plant-based foods—might hold the key in preventing the flu virus from wreaking havoc on our lungs. "The recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza and the rapid...

"I'm president of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli!" proclaimed George H.W. Bush in a 1990 news conference. America's 41st president disdained broccoli so much that he banned the vegetable from the White House menu. Now 84, Bush may live to regret his broccoli bullying: New scientific evidence suggests that a chemical in broccoli may rejuvenate the immune system enough to ward off common diseases of aging. At the University of California- Los Angeles, Andre Nel and colleagues recently discovered that sulforaphane, a phytonutrient in broccoli, activates antioxidant pathways at the cellular level. Injected...

Polysaccharides from black tea may blunt the spike in sugar levels after a meal more than similar compounds from green and oolong tea, and offer potential to manage diabetes, says a new study. The black tea polysaccharides also exhibited the greatest activity for scavenging free radicals, which are linked to development of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, according to new findings published in the Journal of Food Science. Interest in tea and its constituents has bloomed in recent years, with the greatest focus on the leaf’s polyphenol content. Green tea contains between 30 and 40 per cent of...

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Moses Maimonides or the Rambam was not only one of the greatest Torah scholars of all time, he was a rabbi, physician, and philosopher in during the Middle Ages. Much of his career he was in the personal doctor Saladin, the 12th Century Sultan of Egypt. Along with his great books on Jewish learning, he wrote 10 breakthrough medical books and had many medical cures that had been lost through time. One of them might have been found. A doctor at the University of Haifa has tested a compound based on an inedible...

...ROS are also implicated in many theories of aging and cellular damage, which is why cells have several systems to try to soak these things up. That’s exactly why people take antioxidants, vitamin C and vitamin E especially. So. . .what if you take those while you’re exercising? A new paper in PNAS askes that exact question. About forty healthy young male volunteers took part in the study, which involved four weeks of identical exercise programs. Half of the volunteers were already in athletic training, and half weren’t. Both groups were then split again, and half of each cohort took...

Randomized Trials of Antioxidant Supplementation for Cancer PreventionFirst Bias, Now Chance—Next, Cause Peter H. Gann, MD, ScD JAMA. 2009;301(1):(doi:10.1001/jama.2008.863). In 1996, a wave of hope arose when the Nutritional Prevention of Cancer trial reported a 65% reduction in prostate cancer incidence in men receiving selenium supplementation.1 This came only 2 years after the ATBC (-Tocopherol, Beta Carotene) Cancer Prevention Trial had reported a 35% reduction in prostate cancer occurrence among men taking vitamin E supplements.2 Suddenly, it appeared to make sense that this cancer could be prevented by bolstering antioxidant defenses in middle-aged and older men. Prostate cancer was not...

Vitamin pills 'increase risk of early death' By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/04/2008 Popular vitamin supplements taken by millions of people in the hope of improving their health may do no good and could increase the risk of a premature death, researchers report today. They warn healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 per cent. Antioxidants, including vitamins A,...

Fruit of the bog outshines 19 commonly eaten fruits for the antioxidant advantageWAREHAM, Mass., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The latest Agricultural Research Service Report from USDA, containing the results of the most comprehensive analysis of antioxidants in foods, shows cranberries score among the highest of all common fruits on the antioxidant scale (http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=15866). The report includes antioxidant values for a wide variety of foods, which are measured by their Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, or ORAC value. With 9584 ORAC units per 100 grams of fresh fruit, cranberries have the highest antioxidant capacity when compared to 19 common fruits. Oxygen Radical...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adding to evidence that a little wine can do a heart good, a new study suggests that women who drink moderate amounts may have less inflammation in their blood vessels. Spanish researchers found that after four weeks of drinking two glasses of wine per day, women showed lower levels of certain inflammatory substances in their blood. The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest a mechanism by which wine -- particularly red wine -- may protect the heart. Numerous studies have found that wine drinkers tend to have lower rates of heart...

Vitamin C can impede the growth of some types of tumors although not in the way some scientists had suspected, researchers reported on Monday. The new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, supported the general notion that vitamin C and other so-called antioxidants can slow tumor growth, but pointed to a mechanism different from the one many experts had suspected. The researchers generated encouraging results when giving vitamin C to mice that had been implanted with human cancer cells -- either the blood cancer lymphoma or prostate cancer. Another antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, also limited tumor growth in the mice, the...

The reported failure of vitamin E to prevent heart attacks may be due to underdosing, according to a new study by investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The findings, published early online in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, suggest that these earlier studies all had a fundamental flaw the doses used werent high enough to have a significant antioxidant effect. In fact, no studies have ever conclusively demonstrated the dose at which vitamin E can be considered an antioxidant drug, the researchers report. Oxidant injury, or oxidative stress, occurs when highly reactive molecules called free radicals attack and damage cellular...

ISLAMABAD: Spanish and British scientists have discovered how green tea helps to prevent certain types of cancer. Researchers at the University of Murcia in Spain (UMU) and the John Innes Center (JIC) in Norwich, England have shown that a compound called EGCG in green tea prevents cancer cells from growing by binding to a specific enzyme. "We have shown for the first time that EGCG, which is present in green tea at relatively high concentrations, inhibits the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), which is a recognized, established target for anti-cancer drugs, " says Professor Roger Thorneley, of JIC. "This is the...

Flavonoids, a group of compounds found in fruits and vegetables that had been thought to be nutritionally important for their antioxidant activity, actually have little or no value in that role, according to an analysis by scientists in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. However, these same compounds may indeed benefit human health, but for reasons that are quite different - the body sees them as foreign compounds, researchers say, and through different mechanisms, they could play a role in preventing cancer or heart disease. Based on this new view of how flavonoids work, a relatively modest intake...

Deep red tomatoes get their rich color from lycopene, a disease-fighting antioxidant. A new study, however, suggests that a special variety of orange-colored tomatoes provide a different form of lycopene, one that our bodies may more readily use. Researchers found that eating spaghetti covered in sauce made from these orange tomatoes, called Tangerine tomatoes, caused a noticeable boost in this form of lycopene in participants' blood. "While red tomatoes contain far more lycopene than orange tomatoes, most of it is in a form that the body doesn't absorb well," said Steven Schwartz, the study's lead author and a professor of...

Dark times ahead for chocolate By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor (Filed: 14/10/2006) Britain's taste for chocolate is growing more sophisticated, figures out yesterday suggest. Sales of dark chocolate have trebled in a year, while the number of dark mainstream brands has risen tenfold. Confectionary analysts say the figures reflect a more discerning palate. They also follow several studies — some funded by chocolate makers — indicating that dark chocolate can have health benefits. Antioxidants in dark chocolate can help lower cholesterol and blood pressure, say researchers. However, dark and milk contain the same amount of fat and sugar. Although...

Children with autism have a abnormal metabolic profile that may play a role in the condition, according to researchers at the University of Arkansas. The researchers believe autistic children are more vulnerable to oxidative stress, which occurs when the antioxidant system fails to counteract the production or exposure to free radicals. These free radicals then damage cells in the brain, as well as the gastrointestinal tract, and the immune system, which they believe may contribute to the the neurological, gastrointestinal and immunologic pathology that occurs in autistic children. The team analyzed and compared blood samples from 95 autistic children with...

Drinking fruit and vegetable juices more than three times a week can dramatically cut the chances of developing Alzheimer's disease, a new study has found. Researchers followed almost 2,000 volunteers for up to 10 years while monitoring their juice consumption and brain function. They found the risk of Alzheimer's was 76 per cent lower for those who drank juices more than three times a week compared to those who drank them less than once a week. Other research has shown that eating curry can help stave off the disease and improve mental agility because of compounds found in the spice...