Antioxidant Supplements can Cause Cancer?!

Over the years, we have been bombarded through magazines, television and other advertisements that antioxidants prevent cancer because they stop the production of free radicals that can harm one's DNA.  Because of this notion, people would often end up taking medical supplements such as vitamin C and E to compensate for their lack of intake of these vitamins from the foods they eat. The problem is that piling them into your system is necessarily a good thing. Even though manufacturers test these supplements through experiments and the supplements knock out free radicals in a test tube, once inside the human body, they would react differently. Not only are these supplements bad at preventing oxidation, they can even worsen the situation and cause cancer.

According to a study published in the Journal of Nutrition, women who took vitamin A, vitamin E, beta-carotene, selenium, and zinc supplement developed skin cancer at a rate of 1.3% while the women who were not taking the supplement developed skin cancer at a rate of only 0.7% which was significantly less. According to another study from several years ago, smokers taking high dose of vitamin A actually had an increased risk of lung cancer compared to those not taking vitamin A. In addition, Mayo Clinic review found out that beta-carotene supplements actually increased the risk of smoking-related cancers. Several aggregated analyses have concluded that beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E supplements all increase the risk of death, but vitamin C seems to have no effect on the risk of cancer.

Why is this so?

Many researchers suspect that the many beneficial properties may get lost when they're extracted from whole foods and used in tablet form. Some say that by taking these supplements and increasing the intake of antioxidant dosage, cancer cells are at increased risk of damage from oxidative stress than healthy cells. In other words, taking antioxidants might ironically be protecting your cancer cells and allowing them to survive. However, there are still no studies that can prove whether this hypothesis is true.

In conclusion, the problem is not the antioxidants but the antioxidant supplements. Everything should be taken in moderation and the best way to get the antioxidants one needs is still from his diet.

Reference:

Benabio. Cancer Myths Debunked: Antioxidant Supplements Protect You From Cancer. Available at http://thedermblog.com/2008/03/10/cancer-myths-debunked-antioxidants-protect-you-from-cancer. Accessed on October 08, 2010

Five Cancer Myths Exposed. Available at: http://www.allaboutyou.com/diet-wellbeing/health-advice-cancer-myths-exposed-antioxidants/gallery. Accessed on October 08, 2010