Heart Health: Vitamin C linked to lower stroke risk: study

As we know it, around 25 per cent of people in England are classified as obese, so overweight that it threatens their health, compared to 8 per cent figure in 1980. On current trends, half of the population will be clinically obese by 2032, and those with Type II diabetes, which is triggered almost exclusively by being overweight, will rise tenfold to 19 million. Overall, obesity is thought to knock nine years off lifespan. Various cancers, including breast, colon, kidney and stomach cancer, are known to be linked to weight.

The cost to the NHS of treating obesity, already £1billion a year, will also soar. Obesity poses as grave a threat to Britain and the NHS as terrorism, a Government adviser has warned, reports Daily Mail. "The threat to our future health is just as significant as the current security threat."

But, ministers are blamed for failing to take 'bold action' to tackle the growing crisis. Experts have already warned that if trends continue, half the population will be obese within 25 years, causing life expectancy to fall for the first time in two centuries. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We are tackling obesity through awareness campaigns and action in schools"... (source: www.dailymail.com)

We all know what happened in Jamie's Kitchen and resistance that positive changes to school dinners received, from parents especially, although I do believe that the it's legacy will continue to live on. Providing free school meals, which has been proposed, could help, but the core of the problem lies with poor eating habits that children get at home. Parents surely need to be re-educated, but that is easier said than done as they, themselves were probably brought up on just as poor diet. Comments made by public that I came across when reading this article clearly show that people are in denial and really not ready to change anything. Good thing that is done at schools is surely being ruined at home.

Balanced nutrition is surely not on everyone's menu as majority lack the knowledge of what it means. It is NOT just about 5-a-day! That is just a bare minimum to make sure our intake of fibre, vitamins and minerals is at least at our bodies minimum requirement, but, balanced nutrition is a whole different ball game and something that one needs to have a knowledge of in order to be able to plan meals on a daily basis. Introduction of labels in stores was brought about to give some nutritional information that could help introduce more nutrient balance into diet, but that is just for packaged food and still, apparently, 67% of adult population do not understand percentages, so, is it really working? I know it helps me, but not sure it does to everyone.

Something is fundamentally wrong indeed and I am not sure that raising awareness and campaigns are working quick enough and that they are the only answer or that the net is spread enough.

I also believe that war on anything will just perpetuate the problem and bring more of the same thing as war on terror brings more terror, war on drugs brings more drugs, etc., so, fighting obesity by putting pressure and blame on the obese and overweight can not be an answer either and it will only worsen the problem, which, in turn, will only continue to serve well pharmaceuticals and other industries that profit from the bad habits of overweight, obese and, overall, unhealthy.

I do not believe in waging war on obese and imposing restrictions and putting pressure, but I do believe in setting positive examples and leading by example, starting by the people of influence and those that claim that they care about current health crisis. For start, our politicians, teachers, etc. should be a picture of health themselves and doctors should be more nutritionally savvy and be able to give more nutritional advice rather than prescribe pills so readily.

Oh, just how many people I talk to who believe their doctors so blindly who actually perpetuate their health problem focusing on the illness and correcting the illness by prescribing all these medications, which does not focus on prevention but just the treatment of the disease. It somehow even takes away the responsibility for people to proactively do something about their health problem.

But, the fact is, doctors really aren’t trained in nutrition as, in medical school, their nutrition related work focuses on biochemistry; i.e., here is how much vitamin A the body needs, but not necessarily where to find that nutrient. Seems wrong and puzzling, but why not then referring patients to a nutritionist/ dietician (cost covered by the NHS) who can offer nutritional advice and counselling to the patients, which they can really take home and apply to their diet? This would surely help people who really need and want help but can not afford themselves to pay for the service that is mainly available privately. To me, this seems as a real oversight, which just makes no sense at all.

I am not saying this is the bottom line and the only solution as there are many and they must come on all fronts, but I will mention one of the smartest quotes I have ever come across: "If our doctors do not become nutritional experts, our nutritional experts will be our future doctors!"

I focus on the doctors as doctors seem to have such a great power that it is scary as it currently only serves pharmaceuticals who continue to benefit from the soaring health crisis and doctor's authority could surely be used in a more positive manner when it comes to obesity and obesity related illnesses! They too must take responsibility in the advice they give astheir current role could be even deemed as unethical.


Increased blood levels of vitamin C may reduce the risk of stroke by 42 per cent, suggests a large European-based study.



Increased levels of the vitamin, associated with increased intake of fruit and vegetables, were found to offer significant cardiovascular benefits among the 20,649 men and women taking part in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer.

The authors, led by Phyo Myint from the University of Cambridge, state that blood levels of the vitamin could be used as a biological marker of lifestyle used to identify people at high risk of stroke.

"An intriguing possibility is that the plasma vitamin C concentration is a good marker of a wider range of health behaviors, such as fruit and vegetable consumption, that may be protective against stroke," wrote Myint in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "It is also plausible that vitamin C may biochemically affect stroke risk."

Strokes occur when blood clots or an artery bursts in the brain and interrupts the blood supply to a part of the brain. It is the leading cause of disability and the third leading cause of death in Europe and the US. According to the Stroke Alliance for Europe (SAFE), about 575,000 deaths are stroke related in Europe every year. In the US, every 45 seconds someone will experience a stroke, according to the American Stroke Association.

Myint and co-workers followed the subjects for 9.5 years and documented 448 strokes during this time. The subjects completed a health and lifestyle questionnaire at the start of the study, and blood samples were taken to measure vitamin C levels.


The highest average blood levels of vitamin C (greater than 66 micromoles per litre) were associated with a 42 per cent lower risk of stroke, compared to the lowest average blood levels (less than 41 micromoles per litre), after adjusting the results for potentially confounding factors such as age, sex, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, BMI, physical activity, and use of supplements. When the Cambridge researchers excluded participants who consumed vitamin C-containing supplements the results were the same, indicating that the benefits could have been from vitamin C-rich foods, such as fruit and vegetables.

"We believe that these findings are of interest for several reasons," stated the authors. "First, the strong inverse association between plasma vitamin C and stroke suggests that plasma vitamin C is likely to be a good biomarker of whatever causal factors affect stroke risk, most plausibly the dietary intake of plant foods.

"Second, irrespective of any causal associations, plasma vitamin C appears to be a good predictive risk indicator of stroke, independent of known risk factors such as age, BP, smoking, lipids, diabetes, and BMI.

"Given that about half of the risk of stroke is unexplained by conventional cardiovascular disease risk factors and that the predictive validity of traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors appears to diminish with age, risk markers that may help to identify those persons at greatest risk of stroke for targeted preventive interventions with established therapies, such as BP reduction, may be of interest."

While further study is necessary, Myint and co-workers aid that it is unlikely that long-term randomised controlled trials using isolated vitamin C supplementation would be conducted using cardiovascular disease as an end-point. "Nevertheless, the magnitude of the association between plasma vitamin C and subsequent stroke is substantial and independent of known major risk factors for stroke," they concluded.

In an accompanying editorial, Sebastian Padayatty and Mark Levine from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) welcomed the study as "refreshing in that its findings are both clear and not overstated".

"We need readily measurable and reliable biomarkers of fruit and vegetable intake," they continued. "Vitamin C is an attractive marker of fruit and vegetable intake because these foods are the primary sources of dietary vitamin C.

"However, use of vitamin C as an intake indicator has limitations. With ingestion of pure vitamin C, there is a steep sigmoidal dose-concentration relation in humans for doses between 30 and 100 mg. At 100 mg, fasting steady state plasma vitamin C concentrations are about 60 micromoles per litre. At 200 mg, corresponding to an intake of about 5 servings of fruit and vegetables, fasting steady state plasma concentrations are about 70 micromol/L and do not increase much with higher doses. It is unknown whether the same dose- concentration relationships hold for vitamin C in foods."

The take-home message from the study, said Padayatty and Levine, was that the public should aim for between five and nine servings of fruit and vegetables per day and to consume a wide variety of such foods.

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2008, Volume 87, Pages 64-69, "Plasma vitamin C concentrations predict risk of incident stroke over 10 y in 20 649 participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer - Norfolk prospective population study", Authors: P.K. Myint, R.N. Luben, A.A. Welch, S.A. Bingham, N.J. Wareham, and K.-T. Khaw
Editorial: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2008, Volume 87, Pages 5-7, "Fruit and vegetables: think variety, go ahead, eat!", Authors: S.J. Padayatty and M. Levine.