What is an Antioxidant Vitamin?

An antioxidant vitamin is a vitamin said to have properties that prevent damage to cells. Antioxidants are generally touted as anti-aging, anti-cancer, anti-disease substances that some people believe improve health, increase longevity, and fight certain types of diseases like cancer. There are a few vitamins that fall into this class, including vitamin A as beta carotene, vitamin E, and vitamin C.

Although many claims exist about what an antioxidant vitamin can do, there is not a general consensus among the medical community as to how effective antioxidant vitamins are. There is also considerable dispute as to whether use of a vitamin in a supplement form is equivalent to getting it in the diet. It may not be, and some researchers argue it is definitely not the same to get beta carotene from a supplement as it is to get it from eating yellow or orange fleshed fruit and vegetables. Vitamin E from a serving of wheat germ could be superior to vitamin E in a tablet and oranges or strawberries could be better sources of vitamin C than a supplement.

There are some studies suggesting a correlation between increased mortality and taking an antioxidant vitamin supplement. These studies are difficult to fully interpret and it isn’t clear that taking supplements is detrimental to health, provided supplements don’t exceed recommended doses: more is definitely not always better. Nevertheless, there are quite a few respected agencies that suggest there is just not enough research to justify taking supplements when these vitamins are so easy to obtain in foods. Although antioxidants have been said to lower the risk for cardiovascular disease, the American Heart Association presently recommends against supplements and suggests people look for dietary sources of antioxidants.

It is fairly easy to create demand for products based on little scientific information. For years, many people have been barraged with information about the benefits of antioxidants, and a market has sprung up to capitalize on increased demand for things like antioxidant vitamin supplements. When researching this issue thoroughly, people begin to learn that studies on antioxidants are often called into question by other researchers and that information about antioxidants is by no means complete or set, as is commonly publicly believed. There is still a lot the medical community does not know about these substances and how and when they work, and whether any proposed benefits they have also come with health risks.

What is known is that the preferred source of an antioxidant vitamin is food. Humans are better designed to extract the vitamin from the food, and the foods from which these vitamins derive can be healthy additions to the diet. While many individuals and doctors still suggest an antioxidant vitamin supplement is also a good choice, it remains unclear how necessary it is and whether antioxidants truly contain the health benefits that research has thus far suggested.