Interview with Dr Steve Nugent

Did you do your research into antioxidants because you viewed them as the primary factor in the prevention of most diseases?

It follows naturally. We do know scientifically that oxidative stress is an umbrella term. Free radicals are what actually cause the damage. A free radical can be rendered harmless if there is an extra electron that can be lent to it. Antioxidants are called antioxidants because they carry extra electrons which they do not require. When they come in contract with a free radical, they lend the electron to it, rendering the free radical harmless. We could simplify this by saying that if you have sufficient levels of antioxidants to meet the free radical stress, you can render the free radicals harmless and have no damage done to your cells. We know that oxidative stress from free radicals can lead to degenerative diseases like various forms of cancer, heart disease and so on. With this in mind, in the 21^st century – as far as I’m concerned – the most important thing for you to ingest each day would be antioxidants.

Antioxidants come in many forms. At what we might call the ‘high end’ you have the OPCs, while at the other end we have beta carotene, vitamin C and vitamin E and the mineral, zinc and selenium. Are there any others that we should be ingesting?

In the beginning I did what every other doctor does when they get involved with antioxidants, which was to prescribe individual antioxidants. But research says that this is not the correct approach, the medical model is to isolate a selected component and put it into tremendously high levels as a drug. Studies that have been done recently showed that when beta carotene was isolated and used in extremely high levels (which are not natural), it caused health problems. It should never be used in such quantities. Health is synergy and our model should be nature. Plants offer us the best possible model to study. A healthy plant has a particular ratio of nutrients within it. If you unbalance that ratio deliberately, the plant will become unhealthy. If you put too much of a particular nutrient into the soil in which a plant is growing, you end up by killing the plant. So nature provides the very best example for us – it is the ratio of antioxidants as well as the synergy which are important. Different plant antioxidants within them so that a synergy – one type of antioxidant to its cofactor and perhaps with other antioxidants – occurs within the same plant. That results in optimal antioxidant balance as opposed to using the drug model and isolating antioxidants, such as 2,000 units of vitamin A or 10,000 units of vitamin E and so on. That is not productive – it is not the best science and we should avoid doing it.

Mannatech announced its flagship product, Ambrotose, 1996 based on the discovery that the body’s immune system needs eight plant-based sugars – also known as glyconutrients – to function properly. Medical research has shown that cells use these glyconutrients to communicate with each other so the immune system, when confronted, can mount a coordinated response to foreign invasion. These sugars are plucose, fucose, mannose, galactose, xylose, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine and N-acetylneuraminic acid. According to Mannatech, six of these eight glyconutrients are deficient in the modern diet, largely because foods today are heavily processed and balanced meals have succumbed to fast food. Mannatech scoured the world to find new, rich sources of the missing nutrients.