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Article: Vitamins that protect against aging: antioxidants can shield you from the ravages of time. Here's what you need to know to start an anti-aging program. (Consumer guide: learn how to be an educated consumer)(Cover Story).
- Article from:
- Natural Health
- Article date:
- August 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Weider Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A HALF-CENTURY ago, Denham Harman, M.D., Ph.D., realized one reason why people get old. Free radicals, molecules that can attack cells, are responsible--and substances found in our bodies and in food called antioxidants might just slow the damage, theorized Harman, then a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.
Like a lot of good ideas, Harman's free radical theory of aging was initially greeted with a mix of apathy and criticism. Industrial chemists had long known about free radical reactions--for example, free radicals make iron rust--but most scientists had doubted that they occurred in living creatures. That was then. Today, thousands of ...