[5] This is generally due to the biological effects of antioxidants being misunderstood in popular culture, focusing only on their beneficial qualities to reduce ROS to prevent excessive free-radicals which may otherwise lead to well-known disease conditions.
In more severe cases, zinc deficiency causes hair loss, diarrhea, delayed sexual maturation, impotence, hypogonadism in males, and eye and skin lesions.
The primary factor in antioxidants causing or promoting the aforementioned health issues, is the attenuation or inactivation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which immune system responders use to kill or destroy pathogens, mainly bacteria and fungi.
Several complex biological free-radical collection systems already exist for the purpose of scavenging, which normally, do not require augmentation by supplementation of antioxidants to function nominally.
The net result: over-supplementation of antioxidants are a direct, underlying cause of allergenic diseases and skin alterations, spurring signs (objective indications) and symptoms (subjective states) of localized and disseminated medical conditions.
Because of the low-level biochemical nature of these immunological systems and their processes, the consequences of antioxidative stress can result in overlying symptoms, leading or contributing to chronic, co-morbid, localized, and/or disseminated disease states, that are clinically challenging to successfully treat.
A diet rich in anti-oxidants could allow for skin alterations such as acute acne or chronic non-infectious lesions, especially when the Th-1 immune process is persistently compromised by an overload of dietary antioxidant sources, like daily ingesting of vitamin C supplements, for example.
However, a Norwegian scientific study created a table of 3139 products[14] over a period of eight years, with normalized values based on a modified assay, giving a more comprehensive picture when comparing a variety of food antioxidant capacities.
High-capacity antioxidants include, but not limited to, vitamins C and E, resveratrol and flavonoids (e.g. wine), Sangre de grado (Croton lechleri) aka Dragons Blood, green and black teas, cloves, cinnamon, most commonly used spices and herbs, mints, several berry and nut species, coffee and chocolates.
Normal intake of antioxidants, traditionally considered staples of healthy food, may exert beneficial properties towards some disease states such as neurological disorders, inflammatory conditions, and depression.
[1] Diagnosing antioxidative stress is currently extremely rare due to factors such as widespread unfamiliarity, lacking proper understanding in the clinical environment, and trivial modern medical training on the subject.