Chris Kresser: I need to look that up. It’s got to be in our files somewhere. We file away all of the resources, references that come in. It’s not entirely surprising to me. I think I’ve written a lot about this and talked about it. The way that alpha-lipoic acid is an antioxidant, right? So we call antioxidants antioxidants. But we should really call them pro-oxidants that have an antioxidant effect because that’s the mechanism by which they work in the body.
They basically are hermetic stressors that cause the body to adapt in ways that upregulate the antioxidant defense system. And it seems like a subtle difference, but it’s a very important difference because what that means is that something that is an antioxidant at a low dose when consumed in food, so you think about like resveratrol with red wine, actually can have a pro-oxidant effect when it’s taken at a high dose in supplement form for a long period of time. And this is why I think why so many antioxidants have not only been shown to not reduce mortality and morbidity, but they actually increase it. So things like beta-carotene and alpha-tocopherol and some other vitamins that have an antioxidant effect that have been studied in large clinical trial, have shown that again they not only don’t benefit, they may even increase the risk of death and that’s why.
So I wasn’t really surprised to see that study with ALA, and it’s why I distinguish between maintenance supplementation, which are supplements that can be safely taken over the long-term, and therapeutic supplementation, which is supplements that are taken to achieve a specific goal within a specific timeframe. And it’s also why I of course emphasize the importance of diet so much over supplementation in general as a way of getting nutrients into our body.