By Jack Challem

One of the most powerful nutritional antioxidants may have been sitting unnoticed under the eyes of scientists for more than 40 years.

It's called Alpha-Lipoic acid, or lipoic acid for short. Discovered in 1951, alpha lipoic acid had long been recognized as a coenzyme needed to break down sugar for energy production, but it wasn't until 1988 that researchers realized that it was also an effective antioxidant. Judging from the rapidly accumulating research, this nutrient could be one of the most important of all antioxidants-playing fundamental and essential roles in health.

Metabolically, these roles put Alpha-Lipoic acid in the same class as other major and well-established antioxidants such as vitamin C and E and co-Q10. Further, it is likely that lipoic acid will also gain the marketplace "staying power" of these tried-and- true antioxidants.

One of the most powerful aspects of alpha-lipoic acid is that it has dual antioxidant capacities-it is itself a potent antioxidant and the body routinely converts some of it to dihydrolipoic acid, which possesses even greater antioxidant properties. For example. dihydrolipoic acid neutralizes both oxygen and nitrogen free radicals, which play major causal roles in cardiovascular disease, cancer and arthritic inflammation.

There is a catch, however. Although the body produces some alpha-lipoic acid, it doesn't make enough to exercise its full antioxidant capabilities. According to Lester Packer, Ph.D, a molecular and cellular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, people tap the full antioxidant benefits of alpha-lipoic acid only when they take it as a supplement.

Packer, one the top antioxidant researchers in the world, is clearly excited about the nutrient. In a recent interview, he politely sidestepped questions about the antioxidants that he takes, but he unabashedly admitted that he does take alpha-lipoic acid supplements.

Research says that cells bathed in alpha-lipoic acid can inhibit gene mutation, which may lead to cancerous tumors.

Versatile Antioxidant
As you might expect. Alpha-Lipoic acid provides many of the benefits common to all antioxidants. It appears to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and it helps on other conditions aggravated by free radicals. However, alpha-lipoic acid provides a number of benefits beyond those of most antioxidants.

Alpha-Lipoic acid appears to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and it helps in other conditions aggravated by free radicals.

"From a therapeutic viewpoint, few natural antioxidants are ideal," Packer says. " An ideal therapeutic antioxidant would fulfill several criteria. These include absorption from the diet, conversion in cells and tissues into usable forms, a variety of antioxidant sections (including interactions with other antioxidants) in both membrane and aqueous phases, and low toxicity."

" Alpha-lipoic acid is unique among natural antioxidants in its ability to fulfill all of these requirements," he continues, "potentially making it a highly effective therapeutic agent in a number of conditions in which oxidative damage has been implicated. "

Packer points out that, unlike most other antioxidants, alpha-lipoic acid functions in both the fatty and watery regions of cells. Alpha-lipoic acid appears to quench hydroxyl and single-oxygen free radicals, whereas its dihydrolipoic acid form neutralizes peroxyl and peroxymitte free radicals because it consists of both oxygen and nitrogen free radicals.

Alpha-lipoic acid is unique for another reason. It's a major player in antioxidant synergism-what Packer prefer, to call the body's "antioxidant network". Alpha-lipoic acid helps the body recycle and renew vitamins C and E, Co-Q 10 and glutathione-thus extending their metabolic lifetimes.

Diabetes, Glucose And Muscle Energy

Although the general recommended supplemental dose of alpha-lipoic acid is 50 mg daily, much higher doses have been medically approved in Germany to treat adult-onset diabetes and diabetic complications. This dates back to 1970, when researches at the University of Pennsylvania reported that alpha-lipoic acid increased the burning of glucose, or blood sugar.

More recently, doctors at the Rostock-Sudstadr Clinic in Germany have reported that 600 mg of Alpha-Lipoic acid daily significantly reduces symptoms of diabetic neuropathy or nerve damage. Other experiments have shown that Alpha-Lipoic acid increases the sugar burning activity of insulin and reduces insulin resistance. These findings are significant because insulin resistance is a major underlying cause of adult onset diabetes and a prominent factor in coronary heart disease and obesity .

Most of the body's glucose is burned in muscle cells to protect energy .The role of alpha-lipoic acid is generating energy may have been best illustrated in the recent treatment of a 33-year old Italian woman with a genetic defect interfering with her production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which acts as an energy-storage molecule in cells. As a child, the woman had been thin, weak and intolerant of exercise. By her early 20's, she had developed eye-muscle disorders and droopy eyelids. In her early 30s, she had weak arm and leg muscles. A biopsy and other tests confirmed that her muscle cells were producing inadequate levels of ATP.

Doctors at the University of Bologna, Italy, gave the woman 200 mg of alpha-lipoic acid three times daily for several months. She felt better, and tests showed an increase in her muscle-energy levels. Treatment with alpha-lipoic acid also resulted in higher energy reserves in her brain, probably by increasing sugar metabolism and raisin ATP production.

Brain Function and Memory

Recently, Manas Panigrahi, Ph.D. of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, India, described how alpha-lipoic acid prevented "reperfusion injury" after strokes were induced in a group of laboratory rats. Reperfusion injury is caused by the production of a large number of free radicals when oxygenated blood is restored to deprived tissues. In the brain, it typically occurs after a stroke, cerebral hemorrhage or head injury . In the heart, it occurs after a heart attack or coronary artery bypass surgery.

In an experiment, animals receiving alpha-lipoic acid before a stroke, had one- third the death rate of animals who did not receive the supplements. The animals getting alpha-lipoic acid also fared substantially better than those receiving the antioxidant glurachtone, according to an article by Panigrahi. An experiment on reperfusion injury to the heart found similar benefits from alpha-lipoic acid.

Alpha-lipoic acid also seems to protect brain cells against some hazardous chemicals. Two years ago, researchers at the University of Rochester medical center recorded that the nutrient prevented the neuron damaging effects of N-methyl-D-asparate of NMDA. The researchers wrote that the effect " suggests a possible role of these ingenious compounds in the treatment of acute and chronicle neurological disorders," such as Parkinson's and Hutchington's disease.

Alpha-lipoic acid might also improve memory in the elderly, if one extrapolates from another animal study, researchers at Germany central Institute for mental health, Mannheim describe how large doses of Alpha-Lipoic acid were ineffective with young mice; and in aged mice, however, long-term memory improved.

"The lack of any treatment effect on young treated mice suggests that Alpha-Lipoic acid compensate, age related long- term memory defects rather than improving memory in general," the researchers wrote.

Aids and Cancer

Excessive production of free radicals can promote over reactivation of nuclear factor KAPP A-B(NF-KD), a protein that functions as a nuclear transcription factor and appears to playa role in inflammation, gene changes leading to cancer and replication of the human immune deficiency virus (mY). A number of antioxidants block NF-KB. In a cell culture study, Yutchiro J. Suzuki, PhD. Of the University of California, Berkeley, found that cells bathed in alpha-lipoic acid could inhibit the activation of NF-KB and, subsequently, my replication.

Conclusion

The properties of alpha-lipoic acid are strikingly similar to other antioxidants, as is its essential role in cellular energy production along with co-Q 10 and camitine. What makes Alpha-Lipoic stand out, however, is its remarkable versatility. Packer has at various times described it as the "metabolic," "universal" and "ideal" antioxidant. Coming from a leading scientist, instead of an advertising copywriter, such words are particularly meaningful.

Although recognition of Alpha-Lipoic acid as a potent antioxidant is relatively recent, the pace of research on this nutrient has increased since the late 1980's. According to Packer, Alpha-Lipoic acid supplements are easily absorbed and may be preferable to the major dietary source of the nutrient, which is red meat. Alpha-Lipoic acid supplements have been approved and used for the treatment of diabetic neuropathy. Germany, and experience suggests that it is safe and only rarely poses side effects.

"The therapeutic potential of alpha-lipoic acid is just beginning to be explored", observed Packer, "but this compound holds great promise"

-Jack Challem is based in Aloha One, and has been writing for health magazines for 20 years. He also publishes his own newsletter, The Nutrition Reporter, which summarizes recent medical journal articles on vitamins.

-Reported with permission from the August 1996 issue of Natural Foods Merchandiser's Nutrition Science News, a publication of New Hope Communications in Boulder, CO -Jack Challem-1996