Vitamin C DOES prevent heart disease

Today's Post, Tuesday, 5-12-2009

Many years ago Nobel prize winner, Linus Pauling, stated that taking 1,000 mg of vitamin C helped keep you well including helping to prevent heart disease.

More recently this idea was picked up and expanded by a Doctor Matthias Rath.

(Mathias Rath, MD still has a website you can visit.)

This MD believes that heart disease is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C in the cells composing your artery walls.

Other animals can produce vitamin C in their bodies but humans do not; & humans who don’t get vitamin C in food or supplements develop scurvy as the English found in their navy hundred of years ago.

Dr Rath has says that the average person gets enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy but NOT enough to build and maintain healthy and resilient artery walls.

Then our bodies deposit a kind of glue on the microscopic cracks that develop because of this.

Then as this glue, or plaque, builds up & after many years it makes your arteries inflexible and narrowed which tends to cause high blood pressure, heart attacks, stroke, vascular dementia, & other cardiovascular diseases.

So he believes that taking 1,000 mg a day of vitamin C or more helps to prevent this process from happening.

And, since fruit and vegetables have natural vitamin C and many of the co-factors that make it work to keep your arteries healthy plus have many other nutrients with other health benefits, it also makes sense to eat them often every week.

I personally think his ideas are correct. He points out correctly that many animals that DO make their own vitamin C get no heart disease despite having much higher cholesterol than people do. (I take 1050 mg of vitamin C each day plus eating at least one or two servings of fruit each day & as many raw and cooked vegetables as I can that I think give me another 150 mg or so of vitamin C.)

But mainstream medicine has not adopted his theories.

However, there have been studies in the mainstream medical area that DO show that having a high level of C-reactive protein, a marker for inflammation, are much more likely to get heart disease and heart attacks than people with low levels & other studies recently showed that people who had high levels of C-reactive protein as measured by the HSCRP test who were able to lower their level of C-reactive protein DID get fewer heart attacks.

But, guess what? Taking 1,000 mg a day of vitamin C lowers your level of C-reactive protein if it’s high! That means that even if Linus Pauling & Dr Rath are wrong, taking 1,000 mg a day of vitamin C DOES protect you from getting a heart attack by keeping your inflammation low alone.

And, since Dr Rath is likely correct in my view, that makes taking 1,000 mg a day of vitamin C quite important in helping you prevent heart disease and stay healthy.

Here’s where I found out that taking vitamin C lowers inflammation.:

Once again it was in an Early to Rise health article.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .”

"Slash Inflammation With This Vitamin

By Kelley Herring

Reducing inflammation in your body is one of the best ways to guard against chronic disease. In fact, inflammation has been linked with everything from Alzheimer's to cancer.

One way to reduce inflammatory factors (by up to 14 percent) is by eating just two servings of strawberries a week. Getting more fiber helps lower inflammation too.

Here's another way to put a damper on this cell-damaging process: Get more vitamin C.

A recent study of 400 healthy people found that taking 1,000 mg of vitamin C daily reduced the best-known inflammatory factor - C-reactive protein (CRP) - by 17 percent after two months. What's more, the study proved that vitamin C was as effective as statin drugs in reducing inflammation... with none of the harmful side effects.

Here are some good ways to get your 1,000 mg of vitamin C:

Sip a smoothie. If you go with my favorite - Whey Advanced by Health-Fx - you'll get 1,000 mg per delicious serving.

Savor citrus. Make purified or spring water (in a safe, non-toxic bottle) with a squeeze of lemon your drink of choice. Enjoy oranges and grapefruits too - but stay away from high-sugar juice.

Be big on berries. Blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries all help you meet your "C" needs.

Choose crucifers. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, and other members of the cruciferous family of veggies are all rich in vitamin C.

Pick a peck. Peppers are packed with antioxidant vitamin C. Chop and fold into omelets, slice over salads, or add to a stir fry.

Remember: Vitamin C is destroyed by heat. So keep it cool to tame the flames of inflammation.

[Ed. Note: Ed. Note: Kelley Herring - founder of Healing Gourmet - can created a revolutionary health transformation program called Your Plate, Your Fate. In this 7-part program you'll learn how to protect your health and optimize your weight by maximizing the nutrients in your food. Plus, you'll get 3 bonus books to help clear your kitchen of harmful ingredients, spot the nutritional deficiencies that could be setting you up for disease and the 20 tests your doctor should perform (but probably hasn't) to guard your health. Learn more here:
http://www.yourplateyourfate.com/Index.htm?hop=etrhealth .]"