Michael A. Smith - A New Antioxidant Shows Promise for Arthritis
May 10, 2012 Joint pain is not acceptable. Simply put, people in pain don’t work out and can become inactive. And considering that our bodies are meant to move, this is definitely not a good thing.
Staying active is one sure way to improve your quality of life and, for most of us, will ultimately translate into a longer life.
New research shows that the antioxidant, ergothioneine, holds promise for relieving joint pain. This means that we could potentially have another weapon in combating arthritis.
Ergothioneine is a Joint-Specific Antioxidant
The science is not conclusive yet, but it's promising. Dr. Bruce N. Ames, senior scientist at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, told the website Nutraingredients-USAthat, “Ergothioneine is a very weak antioxidant compared to other … compounds in the cell, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Specificity is the key.”1
And Dr. Ames is right. Any time you can target a tissue and deliver a nutrient specifically to that tissue, the effects will be greater than using a nutrient that distributes all over the body — even if that nutrient is stronger than the more specific one. And that’s exactly what you have with ergothioneine: A potentially more joint-specific, antioxidant.
Some doctors actually think ergothioneine might someday be classified as a new human vitamin. Dr. Dirk Gründemann from the University of Cologne in Germany published a paper in 2009 that highlighted its properties as a vitamin. He wrote that it concentrates in the blood by a specific transporter and then is delivered directly into different tissues, like joints.2
Read More:
http://blog.lef.org/2012/05/new-antioxidant-arthritis-pain.html
