Are Antioxidants Safe During Chemotherapy and Radiation Treatment?
By Alan R. Gaby, MD highly reactive chemicals that can damage both cancer cells and normal cells. Antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, coenzyme Q10, glutathione, and selenium can reduce the toxicity of free radicals. While supplementing with antioxidants might, therefore, protect healthy cells from the negative effects of radiation or chemotherapy, the authors expressed concern that taking these supplements might protect cancer cells even more than normal cells, thereby inhibiting the beneficial effect of standard treatment. There are situations in which antioxidant supplementation would be undesirable for cancer patients, but the issue is actually a lot more complicated than the article indicated. Although many chemotherapy drugs do induce the formation of free radicals, their anticancer effects do not, in general, seem to depend on the formation of these free radicals. Consequently, antioxidant supplementation may in some circumstances help prevent free-radical-induced side eff
