The study suggests oxidative stress is linked to declines in lung function and the declines are more marked in women and in female smokers.

The conclusions come from the ongoing “Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults” (CARDIA) study, which enrolled 5,115 participants, ages 18 to 30 in 1985.

Markers measured were:

• Oxidized LDL (oxLDL), a modified form of LDL cholesterol after lipid peroxidation by oxygen radicals.
• Lung function scores, including one-second forced expiratory volume (FEV1) and forced total capacity (FVC).

“While it is known that cigarette smoking is the primary cause of COPD, only about 15% to 20% of smokers will develop it and no one knows which smokers are most vulnerable,” said Dr. Ravi Kalhan, M.D., of Northwestern in Chicago.

Again we can take away from this that increasing one’s antioxidant intake while decreasing inimical factors are the most obvious ways to prevent oxidative stress and thus a myriad of health issues.

Stay tuned to Redox Health for the latest in nutrition news you can use. www.redoxhealth.com

The Journal Of the American Medical Association has published the findings of University of Minnesota. People with high oxidation levels of LDL cholesterol are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome – which can lead to a increased risk of developing heart disease. When LDL cholesterol is oxidized it can lead to atherosclerosis, “plaque” on the walls of arteries.

The study involved more than 2,000 generally healthy people aged 33-45 (average age 40) for over for five years. Those with the highest levels of oxidized LDL had 3.5 times the risk of developing metabolic syndrome five years later.

Metabolic syndrome is a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Metabolic syndrome is also known as metabolic syndrome X, syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome.

Causes of increased oxidative stress can range from smoking to running a marathon; a diet void of fruits and vegetables and high in processed or grilled foods. Increasing one’s antioxidant intake while decreasing inimical factors are the most obvious ways to prevent oxidative stress.

Stay tuned to Redox Health for the latest in nutrition news you can use. www.redoxhealth.com

This month the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 87 No. 5,1290-1297, May 2008) released the findings of a study to test physiological responses to high glycemic foods.

They had lean, healthy subjects fast overnight, and in the morning they were fed in random order 3 meals providing 50 grams of either glucose, white bread, or pasta.

The glucose and bread meals both had a significant - and almost identical - impact on blood sugar. Additionally, the glucose and bread created elevated levels of nitrotyrosine (a marker of oxidative stress) three times greater than did the pasta meal.

They researchers concluded that “high-normal physiologicncreases in blood glucose after meals aggravate inflammatory processes in lean, young adults. This mechanism may help to explain relations between carbohydrates, glycemic index, and the risk of chronic disease.”

What does this mean to you? Well, we already knew that high-sugar foods are bad for us, but many may not have realized that bread, for example, can have a very high glycemic index.

This research gives us a better understanding why high glycemic index foods are bad:

1. Insulin resistance (which can lead to type 2 diabetes)
2. Glycation (the result of a sugar molecule bonding to a protein or lipid molecule)
3. And now, elevated nitrotyrosine (which is found in inflammatory conditions such as atherosclerotic plaques and theumatoid arthritis, among others.)

What’s to do? Stay away from high-GI foods, and when you do ingest them, make sure you’ve had your antioxidants.

MONTPELIER, France, May 5 (UPI) — A study on hamsters found apples and apple juice have cardiovascular protective properties similar to those of purple grapes, French researchers said.

Kelly Decorde of the University of Montpelier in France, part of the European research team, said processing the fruit into juice has the potential to increase the bioavailability of the naturally-occurring compounds and anti-oxidants found in the whole fruit.

The study, published in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, said aortic plaque was evaluated to determine the effectiveness in decreasing plaque that is associated with atherosclerosis — or “hardening” of the arteries caused by multiple plaques within the arteries.

“This study demonstrates that processing apples and purple grapes into juice modifies the protective effect of their phenolics against dietinduced oxidative stress and early atherosclerosis in hypercholesterolemic hamsters,” the researchers said in a statement.

“These results show for the first time that long-term consumption of anti-oxidants supplied by apples and purple grapes, especially phenolic compounds, prevents the development of atherosclerosis in hamsters, and that the processing can have a major impact on the potential health effects of a product.”

Too much of a good thing can be bad for you, even with exercise. This is one of the reasons I’m such an avid proponent for antioxidant consumption when training hard and racing. But don’t take my word for it when you can read about the study below:

Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center started with a puzzling case of a 51-year-old physician colleague had no cardiovascular risks, was a marathon runner, but flunked a calcium screening scan of his heart.

The researchers conclude that the physician’s intense, long-term exercise regime, coupled with a predisposition toward a type of hypertension, contributed to his cardiovascular disease. “In this particular individual, we think that oxidative stress was an important contributor,” says the study’s senior author, Michael Miller, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “But we also found that this individual has exercise-induced hypertension, which I think is vastly under-diagnosed.”

To help gage the impact of oxidative stress on the patient’s cardiovascular system, the doctors of this study evaluated the response to exercise of the endothelium, the lining of his arteries. An ultrasound device was used to measure what is known as flow-mediated vasodilation. It shows how well the endothelium responds to a sudden increase in the flow of blood through an artery in the upper arm. The endothelium in a healthy vessel typically dilates or expands during this test to accommodate the increased blood flow, while an impaired vessel constricts or narrows.

The patient’s blood vessel dilation was normal before exercising. But after exercise, vessel constriction occurred immediately and showed no improvement after an hour. To put this response into perspective, the researchers administered the same exercise/blood vessel response test to a group of ten men whose mean age was 41. The vessels of these men initially constricted, but improved significantly one hour after exercise.

Several weeks later, the patient was given vitamins C and E just before exercise and was tested again for endothelial response. These vitamins are known as antioxidants and may protect cells from free radical damage. This time, the test revealed a partial reversal of the blood vessel constriction after one hour, and normalization after two hours.

“As he took the vitamin C and vitamin E, you could see improvements in his brachial arteries,” says Dr. Miller. “We recommended that the patient take these vitamins before he runs.”

With half the mystery solved, the research team explored another possible cause of the calcium buildup - elevated blood pressure. Hypertension can cause artery walls to thicken and the endothelium to narrow. This narrowing can promote the formation of fatty plaque deposits in artery walls. The plaque, from cholesterol and fats, can eventually harden or calcify.

Dr. Miller adds another question: “Should we screen all middle-aged individuals who want to participate in an exercise program to make sure they don’t have exercise-induced high blood pressure?”

Authors of the study included Radha Goel, M.D., Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina; Farhan Majeed, M.D., Robert Vogel, M.D., Charles Mangano, R.D.M.S., Charles White, M.D., Gary D. Plotnick, M.D., University of Maryland School of Medicine and Mary C. Corretti, M.D., Johns Hopkins Hospital.