Scientists first started to look into the effects of radiation after the side effects displayed by the victims in Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and even more so during the long nuclear standoff between the US and the Soviet Union in the so-called Cold War. Governments funded studies because the wanted to know what possibly could be done, should the cold war ever turn hot. In the course of their research, scientists discovered that radiation exposure triggers the production of the lethal hydroxyl radical in the body. Thus radiation poisoning is due an inundation of the system by lethal free radicals, which is how down the road antioxidants such as alpha lipoic acid entered the picture as a form of treatment for such poisoning.
After the first near meltdown in history in the Ukraine, Soviet scientists found out about the usefulness of lipoic acid in the treatment of radiation poisoning. Lester Packer of the University of California in Berkeley summed up their and his own laboratory discoveries in his book The Antioxidant Miracle first published in 1999. He therein states:
“Exposure to radiation produces a cascade of free radicals that causes severe damage and can be fatal. Radiation decimates the body’s supply of glutathione, which allows free radicals to severely damage the body’s tissues and organs. Several antioxidant compounds have been used to treat radiation damage, with varying degrees of effectiveness. In fact, virtually every army in the world equips its soldiers with anti-radiation drugs that are similar in molecular structure to two antioxidants – glutathione and alpha lipoic acid. Recently, researchers at the Russian Institute of Pediatric Hematology and the Vitamin Research Institute in Moscow have found that lipoic acid may prove to be one of the most effective anti-radiation treatments to date.”“Radiation is so deadly that when animals are exposed to high levels of radiation, only 35 percent of them will survive. Lipoic acid is so powerful that if the animals are treated with lipoic acid before exposure, the survival rate increases to 90 percent. Although we don’t know precisely why more mice survive, I suspect it is because of lipoic acid’s ability to boost the immune system, enhancing the body’s ability to fight against disease generated by free radicals.”
“Fortunately, most of us have never been exposed to lethal levels of radiation, but accidents do happen. The near-meltdown of a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 led to radioactive fallout and massive soil contamination in the surrounding area. People who continued to live in Chernobyl were exposed to constant low levels of radiation. As a result, the incidence of cancer is much higher than normal, particularly among children.”
“Researchers examined the effects of lipoic acid treatments on the level of oxidative damage in children living in areas affected by the Chernobyl incident. The higher level of blood per-oxidation, the greater the sign of damage caused by free radicals. After twenty-eight days of lipoic acid supplementation, researchers had some extraordinarily good news to report. They found that in children treated with lipoic acid blood per-oxidation levels had fallen to those seen in normal children. Even better, the children’s liver and kidney functions were normalized. Even against the powerful free radicals generated by radiation exposure, alpha lipoic acid was able to hold its own.”