Week Thirteen: Free Radicals and Antioxidants

Heavy reliance on supplements

I definitely think that majority of the population rely too heavily on supplements to provide antioxidants.  I myself used to take all sorts of vitamins and supplements thinking that I needed those to maintain my health.  But now, I won't even take them even if they were handed to me for free.  Of course, there are those who'd swear by vitamins and supplements.  But I've read lots of articles about the side effects of supplements and they seem to outweigh the benefits.  Thousands or even a few hundred years ago, there were no supplements, yet people were very much in great health, in fact, much healthier than the people of today!  I think it's our lifestyle which seems to be less and less in tune with nature that there's a need for artificial supplements.  But this creates a bad cycle, the more man-made chemicals we feed our body, the less opportunity we give our body to absorb and digest natural food and vitamins and more dependent we become of these chemicals and the more foreign our body becomes to natural foods. 

Environmental pollutants

I think the bottom line is to get the government to intervene and set laws and regulations to regulate the wastes that are released into the environment.  It's very easy for the rich countries to pack the wastes and dump them in poor countries, but this is unethical and the poor countries shouldn't have to deal with the consequences of actions that weren't induced by them in the first place.  Until then, I think we'd be in a passive position whereby we can only respond to problems as they occur, e.g. the recent earthquake that caused the radiation leak.  But usually by then it's too late.  There are many things been done right now to reduce our carbon footprints, let's pray the pace is fast enough to reverse the damages already done. 

Comment on class discussion


It's interesting to read about these seemingly sophisticated hands-free faucets actually harbor more germs than traditional ones.  Makes you wonder about many other things that we might consider more technologically advanced, but aren't actually better for us, e.g. air conditioning vs traditional electrical fans.  Research shows that air conditioning can aggravate arthritis, neurosis, and sinus inflammation. There are also micro organisms that end up in air conditioning units that cause breathing troubles.