Too Much, Too Often, Too Bad, Free radicals Vs antioxidants- who wins? Options

[John Bobbin BNat]

Hi Guys,

We often hear the expression, somewhere in the middle, or everything in moderation, but do we practice it?

When we drink alcohol do we stop when we know we are exceeding the legal limit, the safe health limit, or even before we become a social nuisance? Fuelled by alcohol people feel bullet proof, and do and say things that they would not do or say in a more sober state, occasionally these actions result in life threatening situations.

Liver damage is also a major health threat, when too much alcohol is consumed too often.

When we eat junk food, we understand that a little bit wont hurt, but do we stop at that or simply pig out on it? We are frequently told by practitioners and policy makers about the dangers of junk food, to the point where people forget you can also create bad health with good food. Eating excessive amounts of good food will make you fat and overburden the system as well, metabolism creates reactive oxygen species (ROS) or free radicals as a normal part of digestion, and there is a reasonable amount of research to suggest this could be causing diseases such as some cancers.

People believe they can simply overeat, do more exercise, and everything will be all right, but is this true. From a cosmetic point of view this may work out, you may retain the body beautiful, but what about health.

Exercise creates free radicals as you do it; these dangerous molecules have been implicated in cardiovascular disease, cancer, aging and a host of other illnesses. The body has it’s own mopping up system to dispose of free radicals called antioxidants, Superoxide dismutase is one of them, but the body can be overwhelmed by free radicals, what happens then?

I have had a life long passion for health, achieved naturally, and exercise has caused me to think long and hard on many occasions, how many free radicals can you create before you overwhelm the system, there is a paucity of research in this area.

We know from epidemiological studies that people who exercise regularly have a better health outcome, they feel better and they get less illness, but how much of a fine line are they walking.
Will the passions of my youth bring me undone later. I push myself to the limit in everything I do, I have been a boxing champion (ranked 3 in the state), a full contact Karate champion (undefeated until retirement, with 5 black belts), South Coast tennis champion several times, and I have always adopted a punishing training regime, that at one stage included daily, 1,000 push ups, 1,000 sit ups, 1 hour of solid sparring, calisthenics and a 5 mile (8 Kilometre) run. I have always watched my diet and drank alcohol sparingly, and I am a non smoker. While performing this difficult regime I have also pushed myself to the limit with study often only getting a few hours sleep before work, I suffered a minor nervous breakdown at one stage because of this, and had to reduce the academic load for a few years. I have a need to achieve and I set goals that I make sure I achieve, second is not an option.

I never get sick and my last health check showed everything to be good, but how do we know that some of these insults wont come back to haunt us, will I get some cancer. Is cardiovascular disease already in progress and has gone undetected so far. All diseases have a beginning, and the first diseased cell is the beginning, not the MD's measurements they consider to be the beginning of disease.

Without research being done in this area of free radical production Vs the body's ability to mop them up, with antioxidant production, how is it possible to know what disease process is in progress right at this minute.

A researcher here in Australia is completing a doctorate in this area but she still has about 18 months to go to complete her thesis, so we should watch that closely.

She released a press report that I will share with you, which is only designed to create some interest in what she is doing, and perhaps attract a bit of funding.



Give it a rest: too much exercise a worry in the long run
JENNIE CURTIN
November 7, 2009

FORGET the morning jog and go back to sleep: exercise may be bad for you.
Blame it on the free radicals, volatile little molecules in the body which are unleashed by exercise and have been implicated in a range of illnesses, from cardiovascular disease and cancer to accelerated ageing.
If there are too many free radicals roaming around, they can overwhelm anti-oxidants in the body (the good guys), leading to an imbalance called oxidative stress. But here's the difficulty: while science knows that exercise increases the production of free radicals, it has also shown that trained athletes are more resistant to oxidative stress.
So, to exercise or not to exercise? This is the question that Amanda Geraghty, a James Cook University PhD candidate in sports and exercise science, is attempting to answer. ''Both trained and untrained individuals have been shown to experience oxidative stress,'' she said. ''However, regular exercise has been shown to strengthen the resistance to this process.''
She hopes to be able to determine whether exercise can be tailored to reduce the risk of developing oxidative stress.
The key is to find out the impact of various exercises - high versus low intensity, short versus long sessions. Ms Geraghty is using ''healthy untrained males'' willing to hit an exercise bike for up to one hour and undergo blood tests to examine their levels of both free radicals and anti-oxidants.
She expects to take another 18 months to finish the research and submit her thesis, which could pinpoint the best kind of exercise regime to undertake.
And while the temptation may be to sit tight until the verdict is through, Ms Geraghty is blunt: ''I just want to emphasise I'm not saying that exercise is bad at all … and I'm still encouraging people to exercise 30 minutes a day.''


Cheers

This post has been edited by John Bobbin BNat: Nov 6 2009, 04:41 PM