Aging, Free Radicals And Pycnogenol®

Science links aging very closely to the insufficient control of free radicals inside the organism. Human life produces oxidative stress with every meal and every kind of exercise, with every sip of alcohol, with inhalation of smoke and fumes; it is an endless list of instances where free radicals are generated inside our cells.

Free radicals attack any component of our body, they destroy proteins, oxidate lipids and modify our DNA. All these events could cause some kind of pathological changes, leading to various kinds of diseases as arteriosclerosis, brain disorders, liver disease and other wide-spread diseases.

The organism is organized to cope with the burden of free radicals by producing an arsenal of anti-oxidative substances and enzymes. That defense system against free radicals works very efficiently when we are young, but, that system becomes less and less efficient with increasing age.

It could be demonstrated on animals with a short life span that life expectancy was highest for those animals with the best anti-oxidative defense system. There is a good reason to assume that a better antioxidative capacity would protect also the human body against the manifold deleterious consequences of attacks from free radicals.

Pycnogenol® reinforces the defense lines against free radicals in several way. First of all, presence of Pycnogenol® stimulates cells to produce more antioxidative substances. Cells synthesize the double amount of superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione, the most powerful weapons to inactivate free radicals (Bayeta and Lau, 2000).

Pycnogenol® itself is one of the most potent natural antioxidants (Noda et al., 1997), far more potent than vitamins C and E (Chida et al., 1999). So it inactivates free radicals outside the cells, very efficiently. Finally, Pycnogenol® is able to recycle the vitamins C (Cossins et al., 1998) and E (Virgili et al., 1998) so that it spares these important vitamins.

These interconnected inactivation's of free radicals by Pycnogenol® will reduce the risks of many degenerative and inflammatory diseases caused by oxidative stress.

Perhaps more important is the boost of the whole antioxidant network to counterbalance the age related decline of our defense system.

Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that Pycnogenol® adds years to our life and better life to our years.

1. Bayeta E, Lau BHS. Pycnogenol inhibits generation of inflammatory mediators in macrophages. Nutr Res 20: 249-259, 2000.
2. Chida M, Suzuki K, Nakanishi-Udea T, Ueda T, Yasuhara H, Koide R, Armstrong D. In vitro testing of antioxidants and biochemical end-points in bovine retinal tissue. Ophtalmic Res 31: 407-415, 1999.
3. Cossins E, Lee R, Packer L. ESR studies of vitamin C regeneration, order of reactivity of natural source phytochemical preparations. Biochem Mol Biol Int 45: 583-598, 1998.
4. Virgili F, Kim D, Packer L. Procyanidins extracted from pine bark protect a-tocopherol in EVC 304 endothelial cells challenged by activated RAW macrophages: a role of nitric oxide and peroxynitrite. FEBS Lett 431: 315-318, 1998.