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| Sunday, 28 August 2005 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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From Abroad
One-touch test for antioxidant level It's that simple - place your palm against the machine and wait for three minutes for the result. Now you know the antioxidant level in your body and you only need to pay 10 Singapore dollars. That's how non-invasive, cheap and quick the procedure has become since American pharmaceutical firm Pharmanex launched the Bio Photonic Scanner in Singapore last November. The conventional option is to take a blood test, wait one to two days for the result and pay around $100. Since November, 50,000 people here have had their carotenoid levels tested by Pharmanex and its distributors. But what are antioxidants? Scientists have hailed them as the good guys to combat the bad guys - free radicals - in the body.Free radicals are a byproduct of normal cell metabolism, such as the burning of glucose for energy. They can combine with the body's cells and tissues to cause problems such as cancer and heart disease. You can help your body to deactivate free radicals by increasing your intake of antioxidants such as vitamins A, C and E. Here's how the scanner works. By bouncing a low-intensity laser off the skin of the palm and analysing the light shift from blue to green, it measures the level of carotenoids, a major type of antioxidant in the body. This level has been proven to be strongly correlated to blood carotenoid count, the currently accepted indicator of antioxidant levels. According to Dr. Carsten Smidt, vice-president of global research and development at Pharmanex, an excellent skin carotenoid score starts at 50,000. Scores of 20,000 to 49,000 indicate marginal to good levels and numbers below 20,000 are a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle. He says that the average Singaporean scores around 30,000 was based on a scan of 1,045 Singaporeans last December. However, Mrs. Magdalin Cheong, chief dietician at Changi General Hospital, cautions: "While the blood test for antioxidants checks for various vitamins like A, C and E, the carotenoid level indicates vitamin A only." Scientists have yet to agree on a standardised form of testing for the level of antioxidants in the body. So should one go for a test? Not if you ask Dr. Anthony Goon, a consultant at the National Skin Centre, who says the area of antioxidants is not established medicine. "There is no good scientific or medical evidence that increasing carotene levels has any health benefits. Hence, measuring serum and skin levels routinely is unnecessary." What is known is that people with diets rich in vegetables and fruit, both excellent sources of antioxidants, suffer from lower rates of cancer and heart disease. Large-scale clinical trials testing the effectiveness of antioxidant-containing supplements, on the other hand, have had inconsistent results. The Straits Times |
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