Antioxidant-Based Therapies for Disease Prevention and Management

This volume, Antioxidant-Based Therapies for Disease Prevention and Management, presents a valuable overview of the therapeutic aspects as well as applications of antioxidants.

This informative book discusses the basic mechanisms of therapy-based oxidative damage and categorization of nutritional antioxidants. It covers the sources of antioxidants as well as their extraction and quantification. The volume considers the controversies of the usefulness or disadvantages of antioxidant supplementation in relation to adaptation and performance and also looks at the effectiveness of bioactives and antioxidant-based therapies for specific health issues, such as anemia, infectious diseases, urinary tract infections, Parkinson's diseases, and diabetes.

The book also discusses the sensing of oxidative stress and the effectiveness of antioxidant treatment, followed by an introduction to several biomarkers to estimate the bioefficacy of dietary/supplemental antioxidants in various forms. Also discussed are free radicals that can cause oxidative stress, a process that can trigger cell damage, and how antioxidant molecules have been shown to counteract oxidative stress in laboratory experiments (for example, in cells or animal studies). Several authors present studies that highlight that high-dose antioxidant supplements may be harmful in some cases. For example, the results of some studies have linked the use of high-dose beta-carotene supplements to an increased risk of lung cancer in smokers and use of high-dose vitamin E supplements to increased risks of hemorrhagic stroke (a type of stroke caused by bleeding in the brain) and prostate cancer.

With this book, sports nutrition scientists, nutritionists, food biochemists, advisors, physiologists, students, and research scholars as well as faculty will find factual information on antioxidative therapies.