Antioxidants

Antioxidant is not a substance but a property, and the products in this collection fall roughly into four groups. Vitamins and minerals: vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium and zinc. Carotenoids: the pigments from plants and algae, such as astaxanthin and lutein.

Polyphenols from plants: curcumin, resveratrol, olive polyphenols and green tea. And the body's own antioxidants, which the body makes itself and which you can also take as a supplement: coenzyme Q10, glutathione, NAC and R-alpha-lipoic acid.

Antioxidants work in different parts of the cell, and that depends on their solubility. Vitamin C and glutathione are water-soluble and are found in the cell fluid and the blood. Vitamin E, coenzyme Q10 and astaxanthin are fat-soluble and are located in the cell membranes.

R-alpha-lipoic acid is special in this respect, because it is both. This also explains why many formulas combine several antioxidants instead of one high dose of a single substance. Fat-soluble forms are usually taken with a meal containing some fat.

Besides capsules and softgels, you will find antioxidants in powder form, as liquids and in skincare. For fat-soluble substances you often see a softgel with oil, because that keeps the substance in solution better.

A few special forms in this range: ubiquinol, the reduced form of coenzyme Q10, mitoquinol mesylate from MitoQ, and astaxanthin from the alga Haematococcus pluvialis, the substance that gives salmon and flamingos their colour.

Online you often come across the ORAC value, a number measured in a test tube in the laboratory. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) took its ORAC table offline in 2012, because the values say nothing about what happens in the body. On European labels, such a figure may therefore not be used as a selling point.

What the label does show is the amount per dose and, for plant extracts, what the extract is standardised to. Those are the figures you can use to compare products.