An Apple a Day: More on Antioxidant Therapy

By William K. Summers, MD
© 1999-William K. Summers, MD

I love going to the annual Neuroscience meetings. I always learn amazing things.

This year's meeting in Miami was no exception. 23,000 back laboratory introverts (neuroscientists) got together for five days, and agreed not to talk to each other. The communication principally takes place in the form of 15 concomitant slide & lecture presentation each hour for nine hours a day. To make things more confusing, there are up to 4,000 research reports presented on posters per day. In front of 500 posters each hour, the scientist responsible for the research stands to explain his work.

With such sensory input, I usually find that my brain is full by about 3:00 in the afternoon. I try to maximize my input by focusing on areas of interest three-fourths of the time, and areas of ignorance one-forth of the time. One area of great interest I have is oxidative stress to brain cells.

Oxidative stress is an important factor in nerve cell death seen in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders and neurotrauma. Antioxidant treatment, therefore , may protect nerve cells under oxidative stress. Recently, a family of chemicals called flavonoids has been under serious scientific study. Flavonoids are a family of over thirty antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables as well as beverages, such as red wine and tea. The way they work is technical. For example they block cystine uptake resulting in depletion of intraneuronal glutathione, thus reducing reactive oxygen species and blocking toxic intracellular calcium levels.

On the final day of the conference, I raced to the convention hall with my luggage in hand. I stored the luggage and went to see a few posters that were of burning interest before heading to the airport.

One of these papers was "Three distinct mechanisms of protection by flavonoids from oxidative stress in neuronal cells". It represented two years of work by scientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California on cultured HT-22 mouse hippocampal (brain) cells. The team of three scientists would put different concentrations of about twenty different flavonoids into the glass dish containing the cultured mouse brain cells. Then they would oxidatively stress the cells the cells and measure the damage.

The neuroscientist in front of the poster very carefully explained the research results to me.

I noted that clearly the most protective chemical was quercetin. I commented, "Of course you know where quercetin comes from ?"

This brilliant man gave me the deer-in-the-headlights look .

I told him that the principle source of quercetin in the diet is apples.

He nodded his head, acknowledging that some time years ago he had noticed the association.

So next I queried, "So you know what your two year effort has finally proven?" I again notice the deer-in-the-headlights look. "You have proven that AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY."

He smiled shyly and went on to discuss 3,6-dihydroxyflavone versus 3,7 dihydroxyflavone.

So, as we all raise our glass of certified organic apple juice from Wild Oats Market, .......here is to your health!!