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Comment by helph67 | Hacker News Reader

Consuming foods rich in antioxidants may help. "Research suggests that free radical molecules can add to the risk of health issues linked to aging. Some examples are heart disease, age-related macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease and cancer." https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

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On the other hand, it's known that consuming the antioxidant vitamin E actually promotes the progression of lung cancer. Cancer cells are under oxidative stress so antioxidants can help them survive and grow.

https://www.lung.org/blog/antioxidants-lung-cancers

Just goes to show that biology is WAY more complicated than "if you want to prevent X then do Y" - especially at microbilogical scale. Genes influence each other for example, so by up- or downregulating stuff you are interfering in a highly complex, non-linear system with complex consequences.

Just look at this example of a gene regulation network: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Different-visualizations...

The Vitamin E / NAC relationship are interesting. As far as I understand, there needs to be a balance of anti-oxidants (C, E, Selenium, etc). To make it worse there are so many formulations of Vitamin E you can buy (tocopherols, tocotrienols, etc). Sometimes its hard to tell from the studies what forms exactly were being used.

You may also find this interesting:

"NRF2 activation is a predictor of poor clinical outcomes in lung cancer. Given the widespread use of NRF2-inducing compounds such as resveratrol and sulforaphane, these findings raise important concerns about their safety in individuals at risk for or living with cancer."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-025-01736-0

Many people eat high-sulforaphane containing foods for health benefits.

And finally from last week https://newatlas.com/diet-nutrition/vitamin-c-air-pollution-...

This was about 1000mg / day for humans.

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