The Indiscriminate Use of Supplements

Abstract

Copyright: © 2013 Gomes EC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Antioxidants are important against Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and free radicals. The latter, when present in high concentration can lead to oxidative stress: cause and consequence of many diseases [1]. It is common sense that reactive species are always detrimental to our organism; however, this is not true. In fact, they are essential not only to the correct functioning of our body but also to our well-being: through gene stimulation, cell signaling processes, vasoregulation and respiratory burst, just to mention a few [2,3]. Nevertheless, the harmful effects of the reactive species are a simplified notion persistent in our society. This has led people to supplement their diets with multivitamins and minerals in an attempt to ingest larger amount of antioxidants to balance out the negative effect of such radicals.