Fish is a wonderful source of protein with a relatively low fat content. Cold-water fish are a little higher in fat, but most of the fats are the healthier type, the wonderful omega-3 fatty acids that are so beneficial for health.

The problem is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined that we should restrict our cold-water fish intake to no more than two servings per week to limit exposure to mercury.

See the updated information for yourself: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html.

A review of studies has shown that the benefits of omega-3s in fish are much greater than any potential danger from mercury or other toxins. That doesn’t mean you should eat every type of fish or eat fish at every meal, but you don’t have to be afraid either.

To limit exposure to mercury, avoid eating those species known to have the highest levels: shark, swordfish, golden bass, tilefish, and king mackerel. Limit intake of albacore tuna to six ounces per week.

That leaves an abundance of fish you can eat more often. Varieties highest in omega-3s are ocean and farm-raised salmon, ocean tuna (fresh and canned), herring, anchovies, and sardines.

Other common types of fish that are safe to eat include trout, pollock, haddock, cod, wild and farmed catfish, tilapia, and whitefish, as well as all shellfish.

Review the numbers yourself and let information guide your choices, not fear and the news media that take so much out of context. Everything in perspective is a good way to live.

You now have more healthy choices!

In Good Health,

AMARC ENTERPRISES

Probiotics are one of the hottest topics in nutrition research today. Almost daily, it seems new benefits of these good bugs are being identified. This report will examine some of the recently published research on the benefits of probiotics, the good bacteria that live in your digestive system. In addition to probiotics, prebiotics–the nutrients that feed the bacteria–have also been researched and are included in this update.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)

IBD includes Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel syndrome. In a recent review article, Ewaschuk and Dieleman examined over 100 clinical trials to see what benefits prebiotics and probiotics may have on these bowel diseases (1), if any. Probiotics were most effective in initiating the remission of both irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease, but were less effective in sustaining the remission. In layman’s terms, when subjects started using the probiotics, the symptoms of pain and inflammation in the bowel were reduced.Probiotics were less effective in sustaining the changes. That makes sense–long-term treatment of IBD requires other changes in lifestyle to keep the disease in remission, but probiotics can help begin the healing process.

Prebiotics were also effective in starting the healing process. Again, that makes sense–the bacteria need a steady supply of the right foods in order to grow, primarily fructooligosaccharides (FOS) and other oligosaccharides. These sugars can also be found in fruits–another reason to eat an apple a day and other fruits as well.

Atopic Dermatitis

Dermatitis seems to be increasing, especially in infants. To examine what effect probiotics may have on atopic dermatitis, researchers examined the effects of probiotics in children 6-18 months old in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study (2). After eight weeks of using the probiotics, children had less severe dermatitis as assessed by independent evaluators using the Severity Scoring of Atopic Dermatitis (SCORAD) index when compared to controls. Even better, the results were sustained eight weeks after the end of the study, which implies that the benefits continued after the treatment was completed.But another question arises: is it the prebiotic or the probiotic that’s important for reducing atopic dermatitis and boosting the immune system of infants? The problem may be that the bacteria are in the infants’ systems but not receiving the proper nutrients from breast milk or formula. In another study, researchers provided a prebiotic mixture of galacto- and long-chain fructo-oligosaccharides to infants (3). The objective was to see if there were differences between the experimental group and controls for development of dermatitis. In fact, infants fed only the prebiotics had less dermatitis than control infants.

This study implies that the colonies of bacteria may be present in the infants but are not being provided with the right nutrients. By providing the correct nutrients, the bacterial flora grew to help immune function and reduce the incidence of dermatitis.

These results may have implications for adults as well. Most adults have been exposed to antibiotics at some point in their lives, which can diminish the microflora. Simply providing the proper nutrients may help the colony grow to improve colon health.

What should you do?

The research on probiotics continues, especially in determining how these bacteria benefit our health, but that doesn’t mean you must wait until all the research is complete before you act. While various strains of bacteria have been used in the aforementioned studies, most are found in supplements currently available. Here are some tips:• Use a probiotic product with several strains of bacteria including Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus plantarum, and Bifidobacterium breve. These were the most commonly used probiotics in a majority of the studies.

• Eat yogurt and other products that include live cultures of probiotics. The more varieties of bacteria you eat, the better.

• Be sure to use a product that also contains prebiotics such as FOS to provide nutrients for the bacteria to grow. It also helps to eat more fruit of all types.

• Prebiotics and probiotics can be used daily. This is not like using a medication–they belong in your gut and should be eaten every day.

As with any change in nutrition, you may notice a difference in bowel habits; that’s typical but shouldn’t last. Good digestive health depends on making sure the good bacteria are healthy and well fed. The benefits to your body and your family’s health are tremendous–there’s no downside.

Reference:

1. Ewaschuk JB and Dieleman LA. Probiotics and prebiotics in chronic inflammatory bowel diseases. World J Gastroenterol 2006; 12(37): 5941-5950.

2. Weston, S et al. Effects of probiotics on atopic dermatitis: a randomized controlled trial. Arch Dis Child 2005;90:892–897.

3. Moro G, et al. A mixture of prebiotic oligosaccharides reduces the incidence of atopic dermatitis during the first six months of age. Arch Dis Child. 2006; 91(10):814-9.

Almost two in three survivors have chronic health problems decades later

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 11 (HealthDay News) — Such great advances have been made in the treatment of pediatric cancer that nearly 80 percent of children diagnosed with the disease will become long-term survivors. But, with those cancer treatments comes risk, and those who survive will likely suffer from one or more chronic health problems years after their cancer has been cured.

In fact, almost two out of every three childhood cancer survivors will have at least one chronic health problem 20 to 30 years after being diagnosed with cancer, according to a new study. The research also found that slightly more than one-quarter will have a serious, even life-threatening condition decades after being treated for cancer.

“It’s important to put our findings into context,” explained the study’s lead author, Dr. Kevin Oeffinger, director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Program for Adult Survivors of Pediatric Cancer, in New York City. “Cancer is a deadly disease and to cure it often requires fairly toxic therapy. Because children and teens have organs still in the growing stage, they’re particularly vulnerable to the effects of these therapies, so it’s common to see chronic health problems years after.”

“The silver lining, however, is that cancer survivors need to realize that some of these conditions can be prevented, and many can be reduced in severity,” Oeffinger added.

According to the study, which is published in the Oct. 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, there are about 270,000 American adults between the ages of 20 and 39 who are survivors of childhood cancers. That’s about one out of every 640 adults in that age group. And, those ranks are growing by about 20,000 survivors every year, according to an accompanying editorial in the journal, written by Dr. Philip Rosoff of Duke University Medical Center.

Because so many children with childhood cancer are surviving for many years after treatment, Oeffinger and his colleagues felt it was important to get more accurate assessments of the long-term health effects, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease and more.

The researchers used information from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, which includes details on more than 10,000 survivors and about 3,000 cancer-free siblings. The researchers looked to see how many adult survivors of childhood cancer had chronic health conditions compared to their brothers and sisters. All of the cancer survivors were diagnosed between 1970 and 1986.

Overall, 62.3 percent of the cancer survivors had at least one chronic health condition — a three-fold higher rate than their siblings. The percentage who had a severe or life-threatening health condition was 27.5 percent for the cancer survivor group — 8.2 times higher than for their siblings.

For those who had been diagnosed at least 30 years earlier, the number with a chronic health condition was even higher — 73.4 percent, and those with a severe health problem jumped to 42.4 percent after 30 years, the study found.

Those at highest risk of serious long-term difficulties were people who survived bone cancer, central nervous system tumors or Hodgkin’s disease.

Additionally, the researchers found that female survivors had a 1.5 times higher risk of a severe chronic health condition than male survivors.

Oeffinger said the researchers don’t know why women have a higher risk of long-term effects, but said, “Women may be more sensitive to therapies years later.” It’s important to realize that women face this additional risk, especially for adult health-care providers, he said.

“If you see 30-year-old women with chest pain, you might not normally think of cardiovascular disease,” Oeffinger said, adding that if clinicians knew the woman’s survivor status and that heart disease is more likely in survivors, they might be more likely to catch a potential problem.

“This study really highlights the increasing need for lifelong follow-up,” said Rosoff, who is director of the Duke University Hospital Program in Clinical Ethics at the Center for the Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities in the Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.

“Thinking about the late effects of treatment is a luxury we have that shows how successful we’ve become at curing childhood cancer,” Rosoff added. “As the treatments for cancer in general get more successful, this is going to be an increasingly large portion of clinical practice. We need to raise the awareness of physicians of all backgrounds.”

A good first step, both Oeffinger and Rosoff said, is making sure all cancer patients receive a treatment summary for their medical records. It should detail the types of treatment they received and the dosages, along with notes about what potential problems might likely occur in the future as a result of the treatment.

“Remember, the first goal is to cure the cancer. If we don’t, our discussion of long-term outcomes doesn’t have meaning,” said Oeffinger. He added that good, consistent follow-up care can help prevent or minimize long-term problems. And, it’s extremely important for cancer survivors to practice healthy lifestyle habits — eating right, exercising and not smoking, he said.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The more drugs an older patient is prescribed, the more likely the patient is to be taking an inappropriate medication, a new study shows.

Overall, 65 percent of the 196 study patients were on at least one drug that was unnecessary, a duplication of the effects of a drug they were already taking, or not recommended for older people, the researchers found.

“The steep rise in inappropriate medication use with increasing numbers of drugs provides a striking confirmation of the potential harms and need for extra vigilance” in patients prescribed multiple drugs, Dr. Michael Steinman of the San Francisco VA Medical Center and colleagues write.

Steinman and his team found that underprescribing was equally common; 64 percent of the patients were not prescribed a drug that they should have been taking.

Medication underuse and overuse were seen simultaneously in 42 percent of patients. Just 13 percent of the patients were not on an inappropriately prescribed medication or not on a drug that they should have been prescribed.

To better understand the relationship between “polypharmacy,” or prescribing of multiple medications, and inappropriate prescribing, Steinman and his team evaluated VA Medical Center patients who were taking five or more drugs. All were outpatients, and their average age was about 75 years. The number of medications they took ranged from 5 to 17, with an average of about 8.

As mentioned, inappropriate drug use rose steadily with the number of different drugs a patient was prescribed. For example, those on five to six drugs averaged less than one inappropriate drug, while those taking seven to nine medications were on an average of one misprescribed drug. Patients taking 10 or more drugs averaged at least two inappropriate medications.

However, the researchers found, the frequency of underprescribing did not vary with the number of medications a patient was on. In addition, underuse was more common than overuse among patients taking fewer than eight drugs.

“Inappropriate medication use is most frequent in patients taking many medications, but underuse is also common and merits attention regardless of the total number of medications taken,” the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, October 2006.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Vegetables are brain food, according to new study which found that eating veggies can help prevent cognitive decline in the elderly.

“Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive change slow by roughly 40 percent,” study author Martha Clare Morris of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago said in a press release.

“This decrease is equivalent to about five years of younger age.”

Researchers followed the eating habits of 3,718 senior citizens over a six-year period and found that consumption especially of green leafy vegetables were linked to a slowing of cognitive decline. They also found that the older the person, the greater the impact of eating more than two servings of vegetables a day.

Researchers meanwhile said they were surprised that eating fruit showed no link to reducing memory loss.

“This was unanticipated and raises several questions,” said Morris. “It may be due to vegetables containing high amounts of vitamin E, which helps lowers the risk of cognitive decline. Vegetables, but not fruits, are also typically consumed with added fats such as salad dressings, and fats increase the absorption of vitamin E. Further study is required to understand why fruit is not associated with cognitive change.”

The study is published in the October 24, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 8 (HealthDay News) — A low-carbohydrate diet does not increase the risk of heart disease in women, a major new study finds.

However, while the regimen skimped on bread and other carbohydrate foods, it was not the fatty Atkins diet that most people associate with the term “low-carb diet.”

In a 20-year study involving over 82,000 women, the incidence of coronary heart disease was roughly equal for women who ate low- and high-carbohydrate diets, researchers reported in the Nov. 9 New England Journal of Medicine.

Heart risk was also 30 percent lower for participants who got their protein and fat from vegetables rather than from meat, they noted.

The Atkins diet, which became popular after its introduction in the 1970s, allows for unlimited intake of animal fat.

“I feel the take-home message of the investigation is that neither the low-fat or low-carbohydrate dietary pattern is ideal,” said researcher Thomas L. Halton, who led the study while a doctoral student at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Both have strengths and weaknesses. However, you can get the best features of both diets and eliminate the negative features of both diets by choosing healthy vegetable sources of fat and protein.”

The real goal is “taking steps to reduce the glycemic [fat] load of the diet by substituting lower glycemic fruits, vegetables and whole grains as well as vegetable sources of fat and protein for refined, high-glycemic carbohydrates,” said Halton, who now teaches part-time at Simmons College in Boston.

In the study, researchers tracked the health of more than 82,802 women in the Nurses Health study followed for 20 years, looking especially at the incidence of coronary heart disease. The women filled out questionnaires on their eating habits, and this information was used to calculate their percentage of energy intake from carbohydrate, fat and protein.

“The main message I walked away with is that a diet rich in vegetable protein and vegetable fat appears to have a benefit in lowering heart disease risk,” said Susan Moores, a nutritional consultant in St. Paul, Minn., and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

The women in the study reported “not what people think of as a low-carbohydrate diet, more of a moderate-carbohydrate diet,” Moores said. “When you look at the amount of carbohydrates in the diets of women reporting the lowest levels, they were not eating a low-carbohydrate diet like the Atkins diet.”

It’s difficult to make specific recommendations based on the study because “there are so many qualifiers and questions about the diets the women actually ate,” she said. “And it is hard to draw the conclusion that an Atkins-type diet affects the risk of heart disease.”

But it was satisfying to see the benefits of eating plant-based fats and proteins laid out in the report, Moores said. “We have talked about it for years, and it is so nice to see it validated for a large group of women,”

More information

Find out more about healthy eating at the American Dietetic Association.

TUESDAY, Oct. 17 (HealthDay News) –While many people take their medications without a problem, as many as 700,000 Americans wind up in the emergency room each year because of adverse reactions to drugs they’ve taken, with 117,000 of those people hospitalized because of reactions.

Those are the conclusions of a new government study published in the Oct. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Even lifesaving drugs can be harmful if not taken and monitored properly,” said Dr. Daniel Budnitz, a medical officer in the division of health care and quality promotion at the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medication use is commonplace in America. According to background information in the article, a study done in 2004 found that more than 80 percent of Americans reported using a prescription drug, over-the-counter medication or dietary supplement in the previous week. Thirty percent said they had used five or more drugs in the previous week.

Measuring the incidence of side effects for outpatient drug use has been difficult for several reasons. One is that people don’t always report minor side effects to their physicians, and another is that there wasn’t a national surveillance system in place to track these events.

Budnitz and his colleagues recruited 63 hospitals that were participating in the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) to participate in the Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance (CADES). These hospitals are varied in size and in geographic location, and together are considered to be a nationally representative sample.

During the two-year study, the researchers found that 2.5 percent of all ER visits and 6.7 percent of ER visits leading to hospitalization were due to adverse drug events.

More than 21,000 people visited participating hospitals due to adverse drug reactions, during the study period. Using that information, the researchers were able to extrapolate that about 2.4 per 1,000 Americans — or 701,547 — visit hospital emergency rooms every year due to problems stemming from their medication use. The researchers estimated that 117,318 people have to be admitted to the hospital each year because of adverse drug reactions.

People over 65 were more than twice as likely to have an adverse drug event as younger people were.

“As many folks 65 and over ended up in the hospital with drug complications as for motor vehicle crashes,” said Budnitz.

Some drugs appeared to be more troublesome than others. Generally, these were medications that require careful dosing and periodic monitoring to avoid complications. Insulin, warfarin and digoxin were among those more likely to cause an adverse event, Budnitz said.

Some commonly used medications were often responsible for adverse events. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, caused about 3.3 percent of the adverse drug events, while antihistamines and cold medications were responsible for about 4 percent of the problems.

“There’s a strong association between medication use and potential side effects,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine.

Budnitz said that doctors have to educate their patients about their medications and be sure that any necessary follow-up testing and monitoring is done. Both Budnitz and Siegel said it’s important for patients to take medications, even over-the-counter (OTC) ones, exactly as directed. Budnitz pointed out that when drugs have been around for a long time, which is the case with many OTC drugs, people tend to be familiar with them and feel they are safe. However, even if you’ve take a drug in the past without any difficulties, that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t have problems with it now because as you age, your body metabolizes drugs differently.

“You should have a healthy concern about your medications, but not an excess worry,” said Siegel. “Know the potential side effects and use your medications judiciously, with caution.”

More information

To learn more about taking your medications safely, visit the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Acupuncture, Naturopathy Popular Among Women with Cancer

Cancer patients are more likely to try alternative medicine like acupuncture and naturopathy in addition to getting conventional treatments, a new study shows.

The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Cancer, provides a snapshot of the growing acceptance of complementary and alternative medicine.

Scientific evidence shows that acupuncture is effective as a pain therapy. Naturopathic medicine is a holistic approach to wellness that involves lifestyle and nutrition counseling, as well as herbal and other therapies to aid the body in achieving a more natural state.

Lead researcher William E. Lafferty, MD, with the University of Washington, has analyzed 357,709 insurance claims for these therapies — 7,915 made by people with a cancer diagnosis. He found:

• Among the cancer patients, 7% had used naturopathy, acupuncture, or massage therapy, and 12% had used chiropractic, reports Lafferty.

• Women, whether they had cancer or not, were more likely to use alternative therapy compared with men — especially massage therapy, he says.

• People with cancer were twice as likely to use either naturopathy or acupuncture compared with people without cancer.

• Women with more advanced cancer — and who were getting chemotherapy treatments — were more likely to try naturopathy and acupuncture.

In another study, women with breast cancer were more likely to use alternative therapies to help relieve stress, Lafferty writes.

Use of these therapies is likely to grow, since insurance coverage is growing, he writes. Also, the scientific evidence regarding certain alternative medicine treatments — like acupuncture for pain and nausea — will certainly prompt more patients to try it.

Chiropractic, the most common form of alternative medicine in general use today, is considered safe in most circumstances, he writes. However, reports of complications when used in treating some cancer patients may limit use of chiropractic in cancer treatment.

Indeed, chiropractic spinal manipulation may not really be relevant to cancer treatment, he writes.

The low use of massage therapy was “surprising,” given the scientific evidence that massage helps several cancer-related conditions, including pain and arm swelling related to breast cancer surgery, Lafferty writes.

Nevertheless, a substantial number of insured cancer patients will use alternative medicine if they are given the choice, he points out. Even if it isn’t covered, “the cost of this treatment is modest compared with conventional care,” he writes.

By Jeanie Lerche Davis

Reviewed by: Brunilda Nazario, MD

WebMD Medical News

Researchers are continually investigating the numerous health-protecting properties of the phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables. (Phytochemicals are substances produced by plants that help to protect them from insects, diseases and other threats to their health. These same substances help to protect human health.) While more than 4000 phytochemicals have been identified, fewer than 200 phytochemicals have been studied extensively. Summaries of recently published studies examining the health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables are presented here.

An Apple A Day May Keep the Heart and Lung Specialists Away

Researchers at the University of California Davis Medical School studied how eating apples and drinking apple juice every day affects heart disease risk. The 12-week study showed that by simply including apples in the diet (and without making any other dietary changes), study participants were able to reduce their risk of heart disease. Apples contain a variety of antioxidant phytochemicals that decrease LDL oxidation. Oxidized LDL cholesterol is more likely to build up in arteries, a process that can cause heart attacks and stroke.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham, located in the United Kingdom, recently reported that people who eat five or more apples a week have better lung function and lower risk of asthma and other respiratory disease compared to people who rarely eat apples. Their findings were based on a 10-year study involving 2,633 people examining relationships between diet and respiratory health. The researchers suspect that antioxidants in apples lead to these health benefits. In 1997 Finnish researchers reported that the antioxidant flavonoids may reduce the risk of lung cancer. This finding is based on a 25-year study examining relationships between diet and health in nearly 10,000 Finnish men.

Carotenoids and Cancer

Carrots and other orange vegetables like squash and sweet potato and dark green vegetables like broccoli and spinach contain phytochemicals called carotenoids. The Nurses’ Health Study showed that women who eat the most carotenoid-rich vegetables have the lowest risk of breast cancer. Researchers report that raw vegetables contain the highest amounts of carotenoids, which are damaged by the heat of cooking.

The Cruciferous Crusaders

Cruciferous vegetables include bok choy, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens, rutabaga and turnips. Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reported in 2000 that men who eat at least 1.5 cups of cruciferous vegetables a week can reduce their prostate cancer risk by more than 40 percent. Researchers speculate that phytochemicals in cruciferous vegetables called isothiocyanates help the body produce enzymes that destroy cancer-causing compounds.

“Berry” Promising News

In a study of 40 fruits and vegetables done at Tufts University in Boston, blueberries ranked number one in antioxidant content. Reported in 1999, a later study conducted at Tufts University in Boston reported that older rats fed blueberry extracts outperformed their study counterparts on balance, coordination and memory tests. Researchers believe that the antioxidants in blueberries are responsible for the benefits. While rats are not little humans, this study has prompted researchers to explore the effects of blueberries on the effects of aging in older humans. The National Institute on Aging is funding studies in humans. Results have not been released yet.

In 2001 researchers from Indiana University and Ohio State University reported that phytochemicals in red and black raspberries and strawberries inhibit the growth of colon and esophageal cancer cells in rats resulting from exposure to benzopyrene, a carcinogen found in tobacco smoke. While a similar study has not been tested in humans, there are numerous studies that show that diets rich in fruits and vegetables help reduce the risk of stomach, lung, mouth, colon and esophageal cancer by as much as 30 to 40 percent.

The Bottom Line

There is an abundance of research on the health benefits of eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. To reap the known and yet-to-be-discovered health benefits of fruits and vegetables eat a wide variety and eat 5 to 9 servings each day.

From warding off heart disease to slowing degeneration of the brain and eyes, talk of the health benefits of antioxidants are quite common today. Antioxidants work by neutralizing highly reactive, destructive compounds called free radicals.

Free radical production is actually a normal part of life, part of the equation of simply breathing in oxygen. Usually, the body’s natural defense systems neutralize free radicals that develop, rendering them harmless. However, environmental assaults on the body, such as UV-radiation, pollutants and alcohol, can overpower the body’s ability to neutralize free radicals, allowing them to cause damage to the structure and function of the body’s cells. There is good evidence that this damage contributes to aging and leads to a host of illnesses, including cancer and heart disease.

Consuming more antioxidants helps provide the body with tools to neutralize harmful free radicals. It’s estimated that there are more than 4,000 compounds in foods that act as antioxidants. The most studied include vitamins C and E, betacarotene and the mineral selenium.

Many people think “supplements” when they think about getting more antioxidants. The supplement aisle, however, is not the only place to find these important compounds. Better places include the produce section, the frozen fruit and vegetable section and the whole grains section of your supermarket. Why? Because the foods in these sections come packaged with other complementary nutrients and phytochemicals. They can provide better insurance than supplements that you’re getting the antioxidants you need in the right amount and form. Here are some good food sources of the four most studied antioxidants.

• Vitamin C — Also called ascorbic acid, vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin found in all body fluids, so it may be one of our first lines of defense. This powerful antioxidant cannot be stored by the body, so it’s important to get some regularly — not a difficult task if you eat fruits and vegetables. Important sources include citrus fruits, green peppers, broccoli, green leafy vegetables, strawberries, raw cabbage and potatoes.

• Vitamin E – A fat-soluble vitamin that can be stored with fat in the liver and other tissues, vitamin E is promoted for a range of purposes — from delaying aging to healing sunburn. While it’s not a miracle worker, it’s another powerful antioxidant. Important sources include wheat germ, nuts, seeds, whole grains, green leafy vegetables, vegetable oil and fish-liver oil.

• Beta-carotene – The most studied of more than 600 different carotenoids that have been discovered, beta-carotene protects dark green, yellow and orange vegetables and fruits from solar radiation damage. It is thought that it plays a similar role in the body. Carrots, squash, broccoli, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, kale, collards, cantaloupe, peaches and apricots are particularly rich sources of beta-carotene.

• Selenium — This mineral is thought to help fight cell damage by oxygen-derived compounds and thus may help protect against cancer. It is best to get selenium through foods, as large doses of the supplement form can be toxic. Good food sources include fish, shellfish, red meat, grains, eggs, chicken and garlic. Vegetables can also be a good source if grown in selenium-rich soils.

By Pat Kendall, Ph.D., R.D.

Food Science and Human Nutrition Specialist

Colorado State University Cooperative Extension