Antioxidants
Antioxidants Cause Cancer
A new study claims that antioxidants like vitamin C promote tumor growth. But what the science actually shows is far more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
Antioxidants
A new study claims that antioxidants like vitamin C promote tumor growth. But what the science actually shows is far more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
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The media and professional world seem to agree:
Antioxidants are useless!
Unless, of course, it's about tumor growth. Then antioxidants apparently work so strongly that they're supposed to promote cancer growth.
By now, any person with normal cognitive ability should understand that something doesn't add up. So do antioxidants work or not?
Certainly: antioxidants from capsules – e.g. vitamin C – are regularly deadly. From an apple, vitamin C is supposed to have a protective effect, even though it's chemically identical. Odd, isn't it?
Just now, Focus Online and others headline, "Study shows: Taking vitamin pills can increase your cancer risk." Specifically, it concerns vitamin C and N-acetylcysteine.
In a recent study – both in vitro and in mice – researchers showed that both antioxidant-acting substances boost blood vessel formation in tumors. (cf. Wang et al. 2023)
And in physiologically minute amounts: about 50 mg NAC and 100 mg vitamin C for a 100 kg person. Logically, the dose would be even lower for lighter people.
In short: just one egg (high cysteine) and one bell pepper (high vitamin C) would, by this logic, increase blood vessel formation in tumors (significantly?).
Please, please understand this in context: as recently as 2022, the highest level of medical evidence (umbrella review) showed that more (not less) vitamin C has substantial protective effects against cancer. (cf. Chen et al. 2022)
But how is this supposed to work exactly? Researchers discovered a protein that occurs in cells (BACH1) that increases when the cell produces fewer free radicals.
Antioxidants would lower free radicals and raise BACH1. BACH1 in turn promotes blood vessel formation, unfortunately also in tumor cells.
Hold on: free radicals… yes, exactly. These are those tiny electron thieves that destroy cellular structures, which is why cells have an enormous protective arsenal to neutralize them.
We also naturally consume many protective substances (antioxidants) through food, and coffee, tea and such also increase cells' ability to protect themselves from free radicals.
Furthermore, for decades we've known that the body ages more slowly when it can better protect itself from this oxidative stress caused by free radicals – not least because these radicals also promote mutation formation in cells and thus increase cancer risk!
How does this fit together? Well, one must know, for example, a study from the same research group from 2019. It was, after all, published in the prestigious journal Cell. (cf. Wiel et al. 2019)
Back then they showed that high-dose vitamin E and NAC don't seem to increase tumor burden, but do make lung cancer metastases 'fitter'.
The study describes the procedure in more or less precise detail.
For their studies, the Chinese researchers use special mouse strains where tumors not only grow extremely fast, but where the most important anti-tumor protein p53 can be switched off at the push of a button.
These animals are so prone to cancer that they often have to be euthanized before the tumor can spread (metastasize) significantly.
In some experiments, researchers also inject modified tumor cells directly into mice to understand the effects of antioxidants – this bypasses important control mechanisms of the body.
Bottom line, the scientists essentially show in their experiments that both exogenous antioxidants and endogenously produced antioxidants – which increase, for example, after consuming coffee, tea, vegetables and the like – could unfavorably influence tumor progression.
So if anything, it's not just about vitamin C or vitamin E or NAC, which fundamentally only work when something sinister is involved.
If the results were relevant at all, it would specifically be about everything that reduces free radicals in cells. This fact is, of course, cleverly concealed.
Moreover, the primary focus of the research wasn't on antioxidants. A large portion of the experiments dealt with the role of BACH1 and how to switch it off pharmacologically.
What the media extract from this is a small fraction of a huge and complex series of experiments, whose results may have little to no relevance for everyday life.
The world stands on its head again – perhaps intentionally. Because of course, we live in a society that doesn't exactly bathe in antioxidants and healthy nutrition. For us, coffee(!) is by far the most important source of antioxidants – what a sad fact!
And our sick society is being told once again that it's better to stay sick. Because taking active steps apparently makes you even sicker.
That behind this might be a research focus, headlines, plenty of research funding for the lab, or simply glory and recognition is something most people know nothing about. ;-)
They prefer to believe the oversimplified headlines and fall ill with a probability of nearly 50% with cancer anyway. But of course not because of the vitamin C capsule.
