Antioxidants – Must Be Avoided By People With Cancer

The reason why antioxidants should be avoided by people suffering from cancer

Research on pharmaceutical antioxidant supplements such as vitamins A, C and E reveal the danger that many are not aware of. These vitamins instead of preventing cancer and heart disease, it is likely that some of these vitamins may harm to the body.

It is believed that antioxidants could prevent and minimize damage caused in human body cells by free radicals, as you get older.

However, the researchers point out that there’s a big difference between the antioxidants that the body absorbs from fruit and vegetables and the one absorbed from supplements bought from the pharmacy.

“It’s very difficult to take an overdose of antioxidants by eating fruits and vegetables, but it’s easy to overdose when you take pills in which antioxidants are found in high concentrations”, explains prof. Jim Kehrer, from the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Alberta Canada.

The antioxidants created to enhance the health of cells and delay aging may have a negative effect on melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer, facilitating the spread of metastasis, according to a study published in the British journal Nature.

Metastatic cancer cells are cells which allow a first cancer to spread to other parts of the body.

A team of researchers from the Institute for Research on children in Dallas transplanted human cells of melanoma in transgenic mice and found that this illness developed quickly in those whom had injections of antioxidants than those who had not taken such injections.

“The results suggest that the antioxidants promote cancer progression, at least in the case of melanoma, stimulating metastases”, said the study authors.

It is not the first time that a link between antioxidants and cancer development is established. In 2014, Swedish researchers have shown that a course of dietary supplements with antioxidants, especially vitamin E, accelerates the development of precancerous lesions or early lung cancer in mice and human cells in the laboratory.

And older studies outlined a similar effect of antioxidants on breast and prostate cancers.

Antioxidants found in food (vitamins A, C and E), but also as dietary supplements, allows neutralizing free radicals in the molecules responsible for tissue aging.

Researchers have long believed that antioxidant substances may also help prevent cancerous tumors, but several clinical tests had to be stopped because “patients taking antioxidants were dying faster than others”, said Dr. Sean Morrison, lead author of the study.

According to him, the explanation lies in the fact that cancer cells “profit more from antioxidants than normal cells”.

The risk of spreading metastases has not yet been demonstrated in humans, but only in mice.

Researchers say that their study results could pave the way treatments with pro-oxidants which prevent the spread of metastasis.