Antioxidants Tell Genes What to Do to your Brain

The Super “Network” Forces

Antioxidants are not like Lone Rangers with silver bullets, working in isolation and independence. They are more like small squads of soldiers that work together in exquisite synchronized fashion to attack and disarm a common enemy, the free radicals. They constantly talk to each other and coordinate their survival. If one antioxidant exhausts itself battling a free radical, another antioxidant often rushes over to revive it. That remarkable discovery is fairly new. Until a few years ago, researchers thought antioxi­dants worked independently. It’s now known they are team players.

Dr. Lester Packer, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, has developed the concept of an “antioxidant network,” a breakthrough in understanding how antioxidants work together to provide full antioxidant protection.

Chemically, what happens when an antioxidant meets a free radical is surprising. In order to disarm or “quench” a free radical, an antioxidant merges with the free radical by donating an electron. That causes the antioxidant to become unstable and actually assume the characteristics of a relatively weak and harmless free radical, which then decomposes. Luckily, some exhausted antioxidants can be quickly rehabilitated—converted back to their original antioxidant form—when other antioxidants donate elec­trons needed for the transformation back.

That’s how cer­tain antioxidants work together to revitalize each other in the heat of battle. For example, Dr. Packer explains, if vit­amin E goes down while disarming a free radical, vitamin C or coenzyme 010 can donate electrons, bringing vitamin E back to life as an antioxidant. The purpose, obviously, is to guarantee the survival of an all-important network of antioxidants in the body; otherwise, to stave off the hoards of free radicals created every microsecond, we would have to eat and synthesize incredible numbers of antioxidants.

However, only certain antioxidants have these special resuscitation talents, says Dr. Packer. He singles out five superstar antioxidants that make up the antioxidant net­work. They are vitamin E, vitamin C, glutathione, coen­zyme Q10, and lipoic acid. These, he says, are the body’s special forces, although many other chemicals in food and synthesized by the body are also antioxidants. Among the super five, only lipoic acid can resuscitate all the other net­work antioxidants, plus itself.

Antioxidants Tell Genes What to Do

Another recent exciting discovery is that antioxidants can help determine whether certain genes you possess are acti­vated to cause mischief, including brain diseases. Fre­quently, you hear that genes have been linked to a disease or disorder, including ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease, as well as various cancers, arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular dis­ease. It seems that virtually every disorder may have a genetic component.

What many people do not realize is that having the gene does not mean it gets “expressed” or turned on. A gene is not destiny! A gene may not instigate trouble, unless it is prodded to do so. Scientists now know certain factors trig­ger activation of disease-related genes. A big one: free rad­icals. Thus, if a free radical or other hazard does not make a hit on a cell’s genetic material, the gene may remain dor­mant and harmless.

This also means antioxidants are mighty deterrents of gene-inspired disorders, because they block free radicals from trespassing through the membrane of the nucleus into the secluded living space where the genes or DNA are located. If the free radical attackers can’t reach the genes, they can’t damage them, inciting them to create chaos. Thus, nothing happens, despite your genetic vulnerability. One of the most monumental things antiox­idants do, scientists now understand, is protect genes from expressing themselves and triggering disease.

BOTTOM LINE: Antioxidants can save you from your susceptibility to genetic diseases, including brain dis­eases and disorders, by stopping the “expression” or activation of the disease-prone genes.

How do scientists know neurological dysfunction is tied to free radical damage? They see it. They have documented that free radical activity is a central event in the brains of people who suffer from degenerative brain diseases, such as ALS, Parkinson’s, and notably Alzheimer’s.

When brain researchers at the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging examine slices of Alz­heimer’s brains, they find extensive evidence of free radi­cal activity. In one comparison of thirteen Alzheimer’s brains with ten normal brains, researchers detected high levels of substances signifying lipid peroxidation, the tell­tale fingerprints of free radicals, in all regions of the Alzheimer’s brains except one. Further, they observed increased antioxidant activity by powerful warrior enzymes such as catalase.

Moreover, it was clear that the forces of antioxidant enzymes were most prevalent in the very areas where fat peroxidation of cells was the most fierce, sug­gesting the brain had ordered out all the available troops in a pathetic effort to fend off the vast destruction, but failed miserably—since extensive brain cell death was obvious.