The concept of antioxidative stress may best be described by excessive or detrimental nutritional consumption of a diet rich in antioxidants, unbalancing the immune systems' pathogenic response processes. Serious health conditions can result if these processes are chronically unbalanced, ranging from acute to chronic. Immunological stress by over-supplementation of antioxidants facilitates adverse health effects specifically including allergies, asthma, and physiological alterations (especially of the skin). Many foods contain
antioxidant content, while numerous dietary supplements are exceptionally rich in antioxidants. Products marketed with health benefits routinely tout antioxidant content as a beneficial product aspect without consideration of overall dietary oxidative balances. This is generally due to the biological effects of antioxidants being misunderstood in popular culture, focusing only on their beneficial qualities to reduce ROS to prevent excessive free-radicals which may otherwise lead to well-known disease conditions.
Correlation with medical conditions Many antioxidative compounds are also
antinutrients, such as phenolic compounds, found in plant foods belonging to the families of phenolic acids, flavonoids, isoflavonoids, and
tocopherols, among others. Phenolic compounds found in foods generally contribute to their astringency and may also reduce the availability of certain minerals such as
zinc. Zinc deficiency is characterized by growth retardation, loss of appetite, and impaired immune function. In more severe cases, zinc deficiency causes hair loss,
diarrhea, delayed sexual maturation, impotence, hypogonadism in males, and eye and skin lesions. High-dose supplements of antioxidants may be linked to health risks in some cases, including higher mortality rates. For example, high doses of beta-carotene and vitamin E was found to increase the risk of lung cancer and overall mortality in smokers. Free-radicals are not the enemy that popular culture has made them out to be, as they aid in proper biochemical signaling that make them necessary in a healthy immune system. Several complex biological free-radical collection systems already exist for the purpose of scavenging, which normally, do not require augmentation by supplementation of antioxidants to function nominally.
Role in disease Antioxidants attenuate the Th-1 immune response, responsible for eliminating bacterial and fungal threats, while the Th-2 immune response compensates for a weak Th-1 response by increasing its own responders, which may be not only ineffective, but overall destructive to healthy surrounding tissues, thus harmful. The net result: over-supplementation of antioxidants are a direct, underlying cause of allergenic diseases and skin alterations, spurring
signs (objective indications) and
symptoms (subjective states) of
localized and
disseminated medical conditions. Because of the low-level biochemical nature of these immunological systems and their processes, the consequences of antioxidative stress can result in
overlying symptoms, leading or contributing to chronic, co-morbid, localized, and/or disseminated disease states, that are clinically challenging to successfully treat. A diet rich in anti-oxidants could allow for skin alterations such as acute acne or chronic non-infectious lesions, especially when the Th-1 immune process is persistently compromised by an overload of dietary antioxidant sources, like daily ingesting of vitamin C supplements, for example. Allergenic reactions by invading atopic pathogens, well beyond the scope of
microbiota, can become initial factors triggering chronic atopic disease. When relating to atopic skin conditions caused by chronic antioxidative stress, symptoms similar to
Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) may appear, a disease where
phagocytes have an impaired ability to destroy pathogens due to a genetic inability to effectively kill pathogens by ROS, versus supplementation induced inability caused by antioxidative stress. == Dietary balance ==