High dose vitamins 'could inhibit healing process'
Taking very high vitamin doses could harm the body by inhibiting its ability to heal, new research indicates.
6:00PM GMT 13 Jan 2013
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Millions take pills to boost their levels of vitamins including C and E, which are antioxidants.
These mop up ‘free radical’ molecules, also known as reactive oxygen species (ROS), that have been linked to premature ageing and cancer.
For many years the prevailing view has been that extremely high doses of antioxidants do no harm, leading for instance to high dose vitamin C pills, which contain 10 times one’s recommended daily amount.
However, scientists are discovering hints that free radicals can be useful to the body..
Manchester University scientists have found that animals which can regrow their tails, only do so if they have sufficient levels of free radicals.
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They also found a marked increase in the levels of hydrogen peroxide - a powerful free radical - when tadpoles’ tails were docked. The levels stayed high during the regeneration process.
Professor Enrique Amaya, whose findings appear in the journal Nature Cell Biology, said: "When we decreased ROS levels, tissue growth and regeneration failed to occur.
"Our research suggests that ROS are essential to initiate and sustain the regeneration response.”
He also said that these molecules were essential to a part of the healing process called WnT genetic signalling, “which has been implicated in essentially every studied regeneration system, including those found in humans”.
He added: “It was also striking that our study showed that antioxidants had such a negative impact on tissue regrowth, as we are often told that antioxidants should be beneficial to health."
The study follows controversial claims by Dr James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, that antioxidants may be harmful to people with late-stage cancer.
Writing in the journal Open Biology, he said reactive oxygen species help clear dysfunctional and dangerous cells from the body. Antioxidants may hinder cancer recovery by blocking their effect, he argued.
However, a large scale study last year found that those who took vitamin supplements were at an eight per cent lower risk of developing cancer, compared to those who did not.
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