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WEDNESDAY, July 16, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- The role of vitamin C in preventing heart disease has been debated in research circles for years.
And a new study that finds a protective benefit from vitamin C supplements probably won't help end the debate any time soon.
The finding, which appears in the July 16 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, suggests that taking vitamin C supplements may reduce your risk of heart disease.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found women who had a vitamin C intake of more than 360 milligrams a day from diet and supplements had nearly a 30 percent reduction in their risk of heart disease.
"Vitamin C supplement use was inversely associated with the incidence of coronary heart disease," says study author Dr. Stavroula Osganian, who is now an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital in Boston.
Cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and stroke, is responsible for 950,000 deaths in the United States every year. That means nearly two people die from cardiovascular disease every minute, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as two-thirds of those deaths may be preventable with healthy lifestyle changes and medications, according to the American College of Cardiology.
Osganian and her colleagues studied data from the large, ongoing Nurse's Health Study, which began in 1976. In particular, they looked at food questionnaires completed in 1980 that detailed the diet and supplement habits of more than 85,000 female nurses between the ages of 30 and 55.
After 16 years of follow-up, the researchers compared the women's diets and supplement use to their incidence of heart disease. They tried to control the data for other factors that affect heart disease risk, such as smoking, diabetes, exercise, vitamin E supplement use and aspirin.
Interestingly, dietary intake of vitamin C seemed to have little effect on coronary heart disease risk. But if women used vitamin C supplements, their risk was reduced by 27 percent.
Osganian says the researchers didn't find a big difference between large and small doses of supplements, which means that more vitamin C isn't necessarily better.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Balz Frei, director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, says the explanation for the difference may be simple. It's easier for people to remember taking a supplement than it is to recall what they ate. He says dietary vitamin C may, in fact, make a difference, but that people may have simply forgotten to report eating foods containing vitamin C on their food questionnaire.
Osganian says the researchers couldn't pinpoint why vitamin C supplements were protective, but she suspects its antioxidant properties are at play. She also points out that people who take vitamin C supplements may just lead healthier lives. That's one of the reasons she says more studies need to be done; these results were also only on women, so they may not apply to men.
So, should you take vitamin C supplements to protect yourself against heart disease?
Osganian says she doesn't take a vitamin C supplement specifically, but does take a multivitamin every day. Frei recommends up to 500 milligrams a day of vitamin C, either from diet or supplements.
"Supplemental vitamin C intake may lower your risk of heart disease, but it is equally important to eat a healthy diet and lead a healthy lifestyle," says Frei. "Vitamin supplements are no magic bullet and always should be just that -- supplements, not substitutes, for a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle."
More information
For more information on vitamin C, go to the National Library of Medicine. To learn more about preventing cardiovascular disease, visit the American College of Cardiology. And here are some recommendations from the Linus Pauling Institute on living a healthy lifestyle.
