Antioxidant rich diet relieves asthma

Posted on Mon, 24 Sep 12

Increasing your antioxidant intake through whole fruits and vegetables, but not dietary supplements, may help relieve asthma.

A research group from the John Hunter Hospital, Australia have been investigating the link between diet and asthma and have come to think that lower antioxidant intakes may be linked to increasing in asthma rates.

To test their theory they recently compared to a low antioxidant diet (less than 2 servings of vegetables and 1 serving of fruit daily) to a higher antioxidant diet (5 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit daily) in a group of adults with asthma.

After 14 days people on the higher fruit and vegetable diet has better lung function, lower inflammation and reduced clinical symptoms.

Interestingly the researchers also tested a dietary supplement of the antioxidant lycopene (from tomato) but it had no benefit. Suggesting that compared to lycopene at least, whole food is more effective.

Reference:

Wood LG, Garg ML, Smart JM, Scott HA, Barker D, Gibson PG. Manipulating antioxidant intake in asthma: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2012 Sep;96(3):534-43.