Re: This negative aricle about Antioxidants appeared in the Lancet

From: peterb (peterb_at_mytrashmail.com)
Date: 10/25/04 

Date: 24 Oct 2004 21:31:19 -0700

sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) wrote in message news:<79cf0a8.0410241247.3df42c8f@posting.google.com>...
> peterb@mytrashmail.com (peterb) wrote in message news:<a25cdd6c.0410240617.25373727@posting.google.com>...
> > Peter H Proctor <drp@drproctor.com> wrote in message news:<o4pfn0loq95veparijl7ls8jsskfjt4uea@4ax.com>...
> > > On 20 Oct 2004 06:10:20 GMT, Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@omsdev.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > >Peter H Proctor
>
> > > >> Paracelcus: " Everything is poison and there is poison in everything.
> > > >> It is the dose that makes a thing a poison."
> > > >
> > > >Someone once said "the difference between a nutrient, a drug, and a poison
> > > >is merely the dosage."
> > >
> > > "The dose makes the poison" is a fundamental concept underlyng toxicology...
> >
> > But ridiculously outdated. Paracelcus lived prior to the introduction
> > of man-made chemicals, which are treated as poisons biochemically
> > regardless of the dose; this is a fundamental difference between them
> > and micronutrients to which humans have evolved a beneficial metabolic
> > response; nor do they provide a health-positive benefit with long-term
> > exposure (and a comparatively small overall benefit in crisis medical
> > care with *short*-term exposure.) Everything is poison in *some*
> > measure; but some things are poison in *ANY* measure.
>
> COMMENT:
>
> Don't tell the homeopaths.

Or the allopaths.

> I have no idea what you mean by "treated as poisons."

The body reacts to them as poisons.

> Some things that
> damage the body are metabolized, and others are outright ignored.

If it's ignored, it doesn't do damage. If it does damage, it's
because the body attempts to metabolize it but fails. The growing
body of evidence shows man-made chemicals challenge the metabolic
response, creating errors along the way. Vioxx is just one recent
example.

> There is no single thing the body does with all "poisons"-- and indeed
> one thing that is done, is nothing.

If a chemical is inert, it's not a poison to begin with. The body
can't do "nothing" in response to a poison, otherwise it wouldn't *be*
a poison. If it *is* a poison, the body is metabolically challenged to
break it down and eliminate it.

> The body doesn't do much with
> aluminum, for example. But you eat it all the time, because it's a
> major component of dirt and dust. Is it toxic? Not particularly in
> that form, anyway.

I'm not too familiar with studies on trace aluminum in soil. However,
soil-based microminerals do impact human and animal health, often
substantially. Many studies show this. For example, in a number of
European studies, naturally-occuring fluoride (ie, soil based)
increased the risk of bone fractures in the elderly. It was one
reason so many European countries opted not to fluoridate. If you
watch something for long enough, you'll get an overall health-positive
or health-negative effect. At some level of exposure, aluminum will be
toxic, to either the plants or animals eating them. More on this at
http://www.nal.usda.gov/ttic/tektran/categoryV3/Naturally_Occurring_Toxic_Factors.html
 
> The body has evolutinary mechanisms for specially recognizing
> necessary nutrients (vitamins, minerals, essential fatty and amino
> acids etc) to be sure, but necessary nutrients are only a tiny
> fraction of what we eat.

Rather doubtful. We've evolved to thrive on thousands of food
chemicals that simply haven't been identified. That we've only
isolated a few hundred is not a reason to think they are the only ones
we require.

> For most of the rest of the molecules it
> deals with, the body has no particular program. If you eat a
> kiwifruit, you're going to be dealing with a few chemicals your body
> has no evolutionary experience with, unless you're an Australian
> native, maybe. For that matter, the same goes for a potato, unless
> your ancestors are from Southern south America. The Irish and Germans
> haven't been eating potatos long enough to make any difference,
> evolution-wise. Indeed, potato skins (especially eyes and sprouts)
> contain the narcotic alkaloid solanine, which in large enough doses is
> a toxin. The dose makes the difference.

Good points. Not all foods are equally beneficial depending on
polymorphic expression. This goes mostly to allergic response, which
is certainly related to the subject. But what clinical evidence do
you see that human physiology is grossly inept at responding to foods
not indigenous to our ancestors? The similarities in organic food
chemicals are bound to be quite similar, and thus largely
interchangeable. Some phenotypes will have a problem, most won't.
Man-made chemicals, by contrast, cannot be utilized for energy
production and are therefore more acutely toxic. The evidence
overwhelmingly shows that exposure to man-made chemicals represents a
serious environmental trigger in disease.
 
> Plants are full of nasty things. Bruce Ames makes the point that a
> third of the chemicals known from cabbage are poisons or mutagens **in
> quantity**. Indeed, that's the whole point of herbology-- you're eating
> parts of the plants that the plant doesn't really want eaten (like the
> root in potato), and so has probably filled with one sort of mild
> toxin or another (think of garlic, onion, turmeric, etc). And in small
> quantities, some of these are medicinal. That's the nature of plant
> toxins. Nearly anything that is specifically toxic by binding to an
> active receptor, is medically useful in smaller doses, as a modulator
> for the physiologic function that receptor controls.

I essentially agree with you. I would just add that our evolutionary
adaptive responses are more familiar with organic chemicals that have
existed along with us for millions of years, as opposed to man-made
chemicals that our genes have no experience with. So the
health-positive benefits of food chemicals (ie., nutrients) in these
"smaller doses" is really a reflection of the naturally evolved food
supply (and our naturally evolved response to them in tasteful doses.)
Likewise, our adaptive response to the "nasty things" in some foods
effectively prevents illness, and when it doesn't, that food becomes
classified as a poison.

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