A number of studies in veterinary medicine in the 1970s and early 1980s were undertaken to examine the causes of a common myopathy in cattle known as "white muscle disease". This disorder was subsequently recognised to be caused by a lack of dietary selenium and/or vitamin E and my colleague, Professor Richard Edwards became interested in whether there were parallels to this disorder in human medicine. His interest proved to be one of the key stimulators of research to examine the roles of such "antioxidant" nutrients in muscle physiology and pathology and more importantly, a key first step to understanding the roles of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in muscle in health and disease. The field has expanded enormously and in physiology, ROS are now recognised to play a role in signalling adaptive responses of muscle to exercise and in the processes of fatigue following repeated contractions. In disease states, a loss of neuronal nitric oxide synthase disrupts ROS homeostasis in muscle of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and appears to play a role in muscle degeneration, while considerable data indicate that an increase in ROS activities underlies the loss of muscle fibres that lead to sarcopenia in old age. Further understanding of these areas has the great potential to identify interventions that may prevent muscle loss during ageing and in some disease states. This research is supported by the Wellcome Trust, MRC, BBSRC and US National Institute on Aging.