In school discussions, newspaper columns, and even personal matters, I don't find it difficult to admit I'm wrong. Part of being human is being flawed.

What's not as easy for me to admit, however, is that I might be wrong when the situation is less than clear cut.Maybe that's the way it should be. After all, shouldn't you have faith in your beliefs, your opinions, your way of life until there's undeniable evidence that such faith is foolish?I would think so, and I would expect most people to do so. But most people don't write a health-and-fitness column.I do.So I will now write a column where I acknowledge that I may be wrong - with strong emphasis on the "may" and the "be" - about the benefits of supplementing with antioxidants.After graduating from college with a B.A. in English in 1983, I began supplementing with antioxidants even though I was consuming a considerable amount naturally through my lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. In fact, the first book I read that summer was not Dickens, but Dirk - Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw's Life Extension.Cover to cover. All 805 pages.I wasn't as intrigued with their claim that supplementing with the right mix of antioxidants could increase our lifespan to 120 as I was with another one: that such supplementation would allow those in their 40s to function as if they were in their 20s.My experimentation began before vitamin companies sold antioxidant capsules, so I would go to the local General Nutrition store and buy the BASECs - a bottle of the B vitamins, a bottle of vitamin A in the form of beta carotene, a bottle of selenium, a bottle of vitamin E, and a bottle of vitamin C - and take one of each at breakfast and supper.Since then I've added six more antioxidants to the fray. Except for a few weeks to see if I could increase my body's assimilation rate by abstaining temporarily, I've ingested antioxidants daily since 1983.In that time, I've been to a general practitioner once - in April of 2006 because I couldn't shake a case of sinusitis. When I've needed medical attention because of injuries from bicycle crashes, my blood work has been excellent, and the sole time I took a physical fitness test I scored above the 95th percentile.So you can see why I might be a bit hesitant to stop taking antioxidants - even though a UC Berkeley Wellness Letter recently included an editorial questioning the efficacy of taking them to enhance exercise and reduce recovery time. The editorial suggests simply eating a healthy diet to produce what is called the "Goldilocks effect," ingesting not too little, not too much, but the "just right" amount to combat oxidative stress.Moreover, a 2012 review paper published in Current Sports Medicine Reports proposes that athletes may only need 200 milligrams of vitamin C a day (and not the 2000 milligrams plus per day I get from a combination of supplements and my diet). The authors note that the 200 milligrams per day limit can be achieved by eating five servings of fruit and vegetables daily.Finally, a review of research published in the Journal of Physiology in 2015 concluded that there is no conclusive evidence to support antioxidant supplementation "in regards to training adaptations." In other words, taking antioxidants, according to an overall assessment of all the research, doesn't help athletes improve.Yet while I've been taking what some would see as unwarranted and possibly even deleterious amounts of antioxidant supplements, I've progressed from a masters cyclist, who was merely competitive on the local level, to one who can win high-level races containing entrants who have raced professionally.So it seems as if they have worked for me, but should you take antioxidants?Based on the recent research, I no longer feel "certainly" is the most accurate advice, so I'll have to write what I've written in response to a number of other health-and-fitness situations: you need to experiment for yourself and decide.If that sounds like a cop out, consider this article recently printed in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and submitted by researchers at Tufts University. It suggests that sometimes you need to "decide for yourself" about matters seemingly decided by science. This particular research found the glycemic index varies up to 25 percent from person to person - and up to 20 percent for an individual depending upon other circumstances like time of day.The findings led the lead author of the study, Nirupa Mattan, Ph.D., scientist in the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging to say, "A food that is low glycemic index one time you eat it could be high the next time, and it may have no impact on blood sugar for me."Mattoon's words are all the more reason to use published research as your general guideline and personal experimentation as your guiding light.