Beta
Carotene
Beta carotene
is somewhat of an enigmatic nutrient. It wasn't that long ago that
people were jumping on the beta carotene band wagon. It was going
full steam ahead, people were taking supplements. Why? Well first
of all beta carotene is the body's pre-cursor for vitamin A. Vitamin
A is very important in the way that our immune system functions.
It makes us see
better, it is important for skin tone. But that was not the only reason.
Some studies had shown that people who had high levels of beta carotene
in their blood were less likely to be affected by certain types of
cancer, heart disease or stroke. And there was even a scientific explanation
for what was going on here.
Beta carotene
is an antioxidant. What does that mean? It means that it has the ability
of neutralizing these rogue molecular species that crop up in our
body called free radicals. Free radicals are implicated in cancer
and in heart disease. Everything seemed fine until a study was done
in Finland. Finnish smokers were given beta carotene supplements.
Why smokers? Because they of course are more prone to cancer than
anyone else. The results of the study were surprising. It turned out
they were not protected from cancer, in fact there was a higher incident
of cancer among the beta carotene supplement takers.
This stymied the
scientific world. Scientists decided to ferret out the problem. Literally
speaking. they took these weasel like animals and gave them beta carotene
supplements and exposed them to cigarette smoke and what they discovered
was at that at high levels of beta carotene the substance actually
acted as a pro-oxident instead of an antioxidant. It was implicated
in doing damage. The reason probably is that when it is out of touch
with vitamin C and vitamin E beta carotene does not perform the way
that we would like it to perform. We need those 3 antioxidants together
to get the maximal effect. And it turned out that in the Finnish smokers
they had low levels in all likelihood of vitamin C.
So what can we
say today about taking beta carotene supplements? What we would really
like to see is a prospective study. People taking supplements having
their health monitored. That hasn't really been done for healthy people
so far. What we do know however is that there is a lot of evidence
in terms of taking foods that are high in beta carotene. People who
eat those kinds of foods basically are better off.
25 milligrams
a day is what we should be shooting for. A spear of broccoli, about
4 or 5. You can get about 10 milligrams from a cantaloupe. Carrots
of course are great about 12 milligrams of beta carotene in there,
but the champion is the sweet potato, you can get about 15 milligrams
of beta carotene and that just may afford a lot of protection. How
sweet it is.
