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These days everybody’s taking the latest and greatest anti-oxidant. Why do we take
anti-oxidants? To reduce the action of free radicals because free radicals are those chemicals
that damage our tissue. They oxidize our tissue. It’s like a piece of iron that’s put out
in the weather it will rust. Well we now know that this action of free radicals is really
the cornerstone of brain degeneration and that comes to us from the archives of neurology
that is put out by the American Medical Association. Let’s look at this study. This study from,
again Archives of Neurology back in 2007, shows us that damage to lipids, proteins,
DNA, and RNA sets the stage for what is called mild cognitive impairment that leads to dementia.
So we really need to understand this information. They looked at the brains of individuals who
died of Alzheimer’s or individuals who died of other causes. And, as you’ll notice here,
the damage in those brains from free radicals was dramatically increased in those individuals
dying of Alzheimer’s disease. And their conclusion is that free radicals play an important
role in the pathogenesis, or what causes Alzheimer disease. Oxidative damage is an early event
in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease that can serve as a therapeutic target to slow
the progression or perhaps, get this, the onset of the disease. That’s important information.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to go out and find the latest, greatest, anti-oxidant
but, what we should do is try to figure out what it is that’s causing so much production
of free radicals in the first place and what does that in humans is when our blood sugar
binds to proteins, that’s called glycation that’s a dramatic cause of increased damage
from free radicals. We reduce that by reducing the sugar and carbohydrates in our diets.
I’m Dr. David Perlmutter.