Slowing Aging
Interview with Dr. Parris Kidd
Interviewed by Lyle Hurd
August 22, 2007
Lyle Hurd: First of all, what are antioxidants? How do they benefit us? And what happens because of all the pollution that we run into on a daily basis?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Well, Lyle, this is what got me into this field. I took on a project in 1983 to write a book on antioxidants and at that time, I really didn’t know much about this topic, but I quickly discovered that even by the mid 1980s, there were more than 4,000 scientific papers on antioxidants and on what we call free radicals. Free radicals are highly reactive toxic substances that are produced from lifestyles and from pollutants. Some people think that free radicals are just totally chemically based, but that’s not true. Emotional stress, for example, will increase free radical stress in the body. Antioxidants are the substances that are naturally produced by the body to protect us against free radical stress. Even as we breathe and make energy, we’re generating free radicals. The production of free radicals is part of being alive and that’s probably what eventually brings all life to an end because as we breathe oxygen, we produce oxygen-free radicals and our antioxidant defenses catch most of those free radicals, but don’t catch all of them. So over a period of years and decades, we gradually, essentially rust ourselves away. Now the rate of rusting, so to speak, depends on our intrinsic antioxidants, but also on our nutritional antioxidants. So the intakes of things like vitamin C and vitamin E and the co-factors like selenium, zinc, manganese, even iron, those things make a huge difference to how fast we age. If we’re doing very well with all of those antioxidant factors, then we can age more slowly. Then there are the, what I call, elite antioxidants like alpha lipoic acide which are not only protective, but also are essential for making energy. So when you put together the entire antioxidant energetic system, if you can keep that system efficient, it’s possible to get out to 120 years and beyond. Well, Lyle, pretty much all the dysfunctions that we can identify and diagnose in the human body have something to do with free radicals out of control. Inflammation is essentially out of control, runaway, cascading free radicals damage and the antioxidants are the body’s primary anti-inflammatory—not the only ones—but the primary anti-infammatories. There is so much we can achieve just by being on a basic antioxidant program. Then you have the more exotic antioxidants that come in as bioflavonoids; you have the green tea flavonoids; you have resveratrol. The plants produce all kinds of wonderful antioxidants because sunlight generates free radicals. So the plants make different pigments and different types of substances to protect themselves from the sunlight. So as we eat a plant-based diet, we’re getting antioxidants from the plants and those also help us. We’re able to put together—we have enough understanding to put together a really, really good personal program for long life.
LH: I thank you very much for your time today and we’ll pick up and talk about other subjects very shortly.
PK: Thank you very much, Lyle, and let’s not forget, it’s all about total health.
LH: Thank you.
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