I am sure you have known someone who died of a heart attack suddenly and without warning. One day they seemed the picture of health. The next day they were gone, leaving behind bereaved spouses and children.
Sadly, this is quite common. In fact, of the half million Americans who die of cardiac arrest every year, almost half have none of the recognized warning signs. That is right. No high blood pressure. No high cholesterol. No previous heart problems. Nothing at all to indicate there might be a problem. Why?
Heres an easy answer – ascorbic acid, or vitamin C.
Years ago, one of my mentors, Emanuel Cheraskin, studied and published incredible data on this one nutrient. His work clearly showed that the more vitamin C you take in from your diet, the healthier you would be. The RDA of vitamin C has been a paltry 60 mg for decades. Cheraskin’s work showed that if you took more vitamin C daily from food, your health would soar.
Now we have some proof from orthodox medicine.
A recent study from the Netherlands evaluated 979 coronary disease cases and 1,794 age-matched controls. Both sexes were included. The researchers found that higher levels of ascorbic acid, a marker of fruit and vegetable intake, was found to be associated with a reduced risk of future vascular disease.
This study controlled for classical risk factors, including cholesterol, triglycerides, CRP, blood pressure, body mass index, age, sex, diabetes, and smoking. Higher blood ascorbic acid was associated with slower aging, lower body mass index, blood pressure, and CRP, and higher HDL. Simply put, higher blood levels of ascorbic acid reduced the future risk of coronary disease by about one-third — all on its own. That is a big number!
How much vitamin C do you need? Dr. Cheraskin evaluated the health of over one thousand dentists and their wives from questionnaires. He compared that to estimated vitamin C intake from food and supplements. Decreasing symptoms were clearly associated with increasing vitamin C intake.
Cheraskin found that at ideal health (zero symptoms) the average intake of vitamin C was 410 mg per day. This is about seven times the RDA! Cheraskin’s work was not limited to circulatory disease. Unlike statins, which may reduce heart attacks a bit in exchange for more non-vascular deaths, abundant natural vitamin C can reduce illness across the board.
Action to take: I am not suggesting that you run out and measure your blood levels of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), although its easy to do. Simply emphasize foods in your diet containing it. That means shunning canned and processed foods where the manufacturer has removed the vitamin C or destroyed it with heat.
Emphasize the foods that God made rich in nutrient — fruit and veggies. Its true that Cheraskin’s work included supplemental vitamin C. However, in personal lectures with him, he told me he was convinced of the dietary superiority of the 410 mg of vitamin C over supplements. He admitted that there are too many co-factors of vitamin C (like bioflavonoids) contained in whole foods that could never be matched in supplements.
I did not need any more convincing than from the horses mouth. I hope you wont either. If you want it directly from the horses mouth, you can order Cheraskin’s book, The Vitamin C Connection. Its available online from Amazon.com.
I will have even more information on vitamin C in upcoming issues, so please stay tuned.
Ref: Boekholdt, S.M. and M.C. Meuwese. Plasma concentrations of ascorbic acid and C-reactive protein, and risk of future coronary artery disease, in apparently healthy men and women: the EPIC-Norfolk prospective population study, Br J Nutr., 2006, 96(3): 516-22.