Vitamin C for Smokers – A Long Shot
May 8th, 2009 | by admin |From the Publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine
A study showing that injecting chronic smokers with vitamin C helped their arteries widen made headlines when it was published in the July 1 Circulation. But smokers shouldn’t think they can pop pills to avoid heart disease.
Cigarette smoke contains chemicals called free radicals, which initiate a chain of artery- damaging events. They make LDL (“bad” cholesterol) stickier and more likely to cause atherosclerosis (clogged arteries). Vitamin C is an antioxidant—a substance that mops up free radicals before they wreak havoc.
In this small all-male study, 10 nonsmokers and 10 long-time smokers (a pack a day for more than 20 years) were first given shots of a chemical that relaxes the lining of the arteries. The result in nonsmokers was wider arteries, but as expected, the smokers’ arteries didn’t respond well. Then all the men were injected with vitamin C. When researchers tried the chemical again, the smokers’ arteries widened much more. But is this a “cure” for smoking-induced atherosclerosis?
“Not by a long shot,” says HealthNews associate editor Harry Greene, MD. About one gram of vitamin C was injected directly into the men’s arteries; you’d have to swallow a lot of pills to get this amount into your bloodstream, and daily injections aren’t very appealing. Also, the widening effect was probably temporary, according to the researchers. And the study only looked at the arm arteries; coronary arteries might react differently.
Increasing your vitamin C intake probably won’t help. A large study published in 1993 by Eric Rimm, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, found no evidence that high intakes of vitamin C, from pills or food, could reduce smokers’ risk of heart disease. His advice: “The best thing for smokers to do is quit.”
