Protandim (Wikipedia link) is a dietary supplement that supposedly boosts your body’s “production of a network of antioxidant enzymes” and thus up your antioxidant levels, and thus improve your health.
A Web search turned up 4 studies, 2 sponsored by the company who makes the product (LifeVantage Corporation) and 2 others with supposedly independent sponsors. All 4 showed significant (but different, because they were testing for different things) positive effects.
What’s the SD?
An antioxidant is a molecule that inhibits oxidative reactions. An enzyme is a protein that catalyzes (i.e. lowers the activation energy and amplifying the natural reaction rate of) biochemical reactions. There are enzymes that catalyze reduction operations (essentially reversing oxidation reactions) but I don’t know what a “network of antioxidant enzymes” is. Network implies that they are interlinked or have some kind of cooperative regulatory behavior; enzymes in general don’t work with each other, and simply catalyze a range of reactions before falling apart or being reduced by other enzymes (proteases) to be used elsewhere.
I haven’t reviewed the studies, but in general most epistemological studies on the effect of anti-oxidants suffer from the particular problem of not being able to isolate the independent or covariant factors from any other influences, and not being able to demonstrate a direct causal link, i.e. when you consume antioxidants or enzymes do they actually make it intact through the digestion and respiratory process and into the cellular level, or are they broken down by the body and built up into whatever the cells think they need at the time? The problem with a lot of claims about the health benefits of antioxidants is that they default to assuming that oxidation reactions are a bad thing, and reducing them is good. In fact, respiration requires oxidation–hence, why we absorb oxygen from the atmosphere–and short of mitochondrial disorders the body is pretty good about regulating the production of antioxidants to keep reactions in check and from destroying the cell from the inside out provided that you aren’t eating a bunch of crap that accelerates energetic reactions (in particular, a lot of simple refined carbohydrates).
Given the sort of mangled, pseudoscientific use of biochemical terminology and the unlikelihood that they’ve somehow produced a study that definitively isolates their product as being a primary causative agent in health improvement, I’m going to do with the position that their claims are very likely crap.
Stranger
It depends on what you mean by “real data”.
I checked the abstract to the single study in humans referenced on the Wikipedia page. It looked at certain antioxidant levels in a small number of people. It did not identify any health benefits in the study’s subjects.
Antioxidants are a major buzzword in today’s supplement market. A problem is that increased antioxidant activity is not synonymous with good health. Some studies (as in the case of vitamin E) have been disappointing. Antioxidants may actually be harmful in certain cases.
People love the idea of a magic food or supplement that will put them on a path to great health, without having to do the difficult stuff (lose weight, exercise, get enough sleep, eat healthy in general). I don’t see evidence that Protandim is magic, any more than the zillion other supplements or “miracle foods” on the market.
The Wikipedia page on Protandim says it “has not been evaluated by the FDA and “is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.””
That phrase (not unique to Protandim by any means) has been referred to, with good reason, as “the quack Miranda warning”. 