Is atherosclerosis really a symptom of scurvy?

Part 5: Better than statins?

Willis's studies strongly suggest that vitamin C can really reverse heart disease. Clearly, before it is used in this way, more research is needed. It will also be fought by the pharmaceutical companies for whom cholesterol-lowering statins are the biggest selling drugs of all time. With no likelihood of a patent on a vitamin, there is no way anyone can make money out of it. The current EU campaign against high-dose supplements, largely orchestrated by those drug companies, would also hamper such research.

Nevertheless, there does appear to be a recent and growing interest in the role of vitamin C in heart disease with a number of recent studies supporting the earlier evidence.

For example, a 2003 study found that vitamin C can reduce atrial fibrillation, the most common arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice and a potentially fatal condition related to atherosclerosis.[1]

The next year, another discovered that vitamin C suppresses and delays the oxidation of LDL.[2]

And a year after that, another found that vitamin C works in a similar way to atorvastatin (Lipitor).[3] ]

These recent studies offer a remarkable possibility: that heart disease in the West can be overcome by a vitamin which is cheap and has no adverse side effects, rather than a very expensive and harmful statin drug.

References