The Role Of Free Radicals In Cancer

From the office of Dr Magne, author of Cancer Free For Life.

Your body burns food for fuel just as a fireplace burns wood for fuel. In both cases it is literally a burning process. In your body, this burning occurs molecule by molecule, so that a fire does not erupt. Both processes — that in a fireplace and that in the cells of your body — burn oxygen, a process called "oxidation." In a fireplace, there are ashes left over after the fire. In your body, free radicals are left over. These are molecules which act like flaming torches in relation to the tissues of your body. Free radicals, at a molecular level, burn everything they touch.

The breakdown of fats in the body produces even more free radicals than does the breakdown of carbohydrates and proteins. There are several categories of free radicals, which result from the oxidation of different kinds of foods. Cholesterol, fats and particularly unsaturated fats, are routinely oxidized to free radicals which attack and destroy cell membranes.

Because free radicals are so damaging to the body, nature has designed a system to neutralize them. The body produces substances called "antioxidants," which convert free radicals into harmless molecules. Antioxidants are produced within the cells. The cells' ability to produce adequate amounts of antioxidants is determined by age, inheritance, nutrition and stress. People who produce higher than usual levels of natural antioxidants enjoy greater health and longevity.

As a person grows older, the cells are less able to produce sufficient amounts of antioxidants. This circumstance is made worse when the person is on a high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, or when the person is ill.

Any combination of these conditions can result in an imbalance, so that there are excess free radicals in the body, which attack the tissues and cause cell breakdown and inflammation. The most obvious result is arthritis , but most investigators believe that excess free radicals play an important part in cancer, heart disease, cataracts and aging itself. It may be that hydroxyl free radicals attack the very systems which produce antioxidants and thus, over a period of years, weaken the body's ability to deal with hydroxyl free radicals. To learn about how disease is created in the body, read Cancer Free For Life.

Whatever the cause, the production of antioxidants begins to decline at age twenty and, interestingly, this also is the time when visible aging begins. Until very recently, aging and the degenerative changes which go along with aging were thought to be inevitable. This may turn out not to be the case.

Here is a list of vitamin antioxidants: vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is the precursor of the vitamin A molecule. It is made of two vitamin A molecules attached to each other.

Antioxidants identical to the body's own naturally occurring antioxidants can be extracted from whole grain. The first order of business is to stop swallowing free radicals. Free radicals are produced by frying foods in oil or fat. Do not eat fried foods.

The most powerful source of free radical formation is saturated fat. Eat a minimum of saturated fat in your diet. Every day, eat a large salad and one or two carrots. This supplies beta-carotene, plus other carotenes as well, vitamin C and probably a variety of useful substances not yet discovered.

Take antioxidants daily: vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, selenium., L-cysteine, thiamine.

Take a daily vitamin B complex supplement with two to three times the daily recommended level of vitamin Bs.

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