Don't Be Taken In! Nrf2 Activator Supplements May Not Be Safe!

Over the past several years, I have written about how I believe that Nrf2 depletion might be a cause of environmental illnesses that present with high levels of environmental stress. I also have mentioned how foods that contain sulforaphane, quercetin, EGCG and others might help to normalize Nrf2 levels. That being said, I do not endorse Nrf2 Activator supplements unless prescribed by a physician that actually knows what he or she is doing. There are many activators on the supplement market. These are not regulated by the FDA and therefore, I do not believe they are considered safe until more research is done on their effectiveness. Low levels of Nrf2 production can lead to disease but so can, having an continual overexpression of Nrf2. Bruns writes, "previous work suggests that Nrf2 activators induce the Nrf2 transcriptional program in some cell types, but not others, demonstrating that cell and tissue types respond quite differently to Nrf2 activators. Varying metabolic demands between tissues may be responsible for tissue-specific Nrf2 activity, or inherent properties of the tissue, such as expression of Nrf2 activators/inhibitors."  (1) 



Nrf2 Signaling and the Slowed Aging Phenotype: Evidence from Long-Lived Models. Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity, Vol. 2015 (2015) by Danielle R. Bruns, Joshua C. Drake, Laurie M. Biela, et al. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637130/