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
1. Korantzopoulos P, Kolettis T, Siogas K, Goudevenos J. Atrial fibrillation and electrical remodeling: the potential role of inflammation and oxidative stress. Med Sci Monit 2003; 9: RA225-92. Chu Y-F, Rui Hai Liu. Novel Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) Oxidation Model: Antioxidant Capacity for the Inhibition of LDL Oxidation. J Agric Food Chem 2004; 52: 6818-23
3. Kaul D, Baba MI. Genomic effect of vitamin 'C' and statins within human mononuclear cells involved in atherogenic process. Eur J Clin Nutr 2005; 59: 978-81.
