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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Your Dai­ly Health

Vitamin C linked with reduced stroke risk

by

20140221

Mak­ing sure you get enough vi­t­a­min C could help pro­tect you from stroke, a small new study sug­gests.

Re­search pre­sent­ed at the an­nu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy shows that risk of haem­or­rhag­ic stroke–which is more dead­ly, but rar­er, than is­chemic stroke–is low­er among peo­ple who have nor­mal vi­t­a­min C lev­els, com­pared with peo­ple with de­plet­ed vi­t­a­min C lev­els.

"Our re­sults show that vi­t­a­min C de­fi­cien­cy should be con­sid­ered a risk fac­tor for this se­vere type of stroke, as were high blood pres­sure, drink­ing al­co­hol and be­ing over­weight in our study," study re­searcher Dr St�phane Van­nier, MD, of Pontchail­lou Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal in France, said in a state­ment.

"More re­search is need­ed to ex­plore specif­i­cal­ly how vi­t­a­min C may help to re­duce stroke risk. For ex­am­ple, the vi­t­a­min may reg­u­late blood pres­sure."

For the study, re­searchers test­ed vi­t­a­min C blood lev­els of 65 peo­ple who had ex­pe­ri­enced an in­trac­ere­bral haem­or­rhag­ic stroke, as well as the vi­t­a­min C blood lev­els of healthy peo­ple who had not suf­fered a stroke. Among all the peo­ple, 45 per cent had nor­mal vi­t­a­min C lev­els and 45 per cent had de­plet­ed vi­t­a­min C lev­els. Four­teen per cent of peo­ple had vi­t­a­min C lev­els so low they were con­sid­ered de­fi­cient. How­ev­er, re­searchers found that the ones who had nor­mal vi­t­a­min C lev­els were the ones who hadn't had a stroke, while the ones with de­plet­ed vi­t­a­min C lev­els were the ones who had had a stroke.

Be­cause the find­ings have yet to be pub­lished in a peer-re­viewed jour­nal, they should be con­sid­ered pre­lim­i­nary. How­ev­er, this isn't the first time vi­t­a­min C has been linked with a de­creased risk of stroke. In 2008, a study by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge re­searchers showed that peo­ple with the high­est blood lev­els of vi­t­a­min C had a risk of stroke 42 per cent low­er than peo­ple with the low­est blood lev­els of the vi­t­a­min. And a 1995 study in the British Med­ical Jour­nal had sim­i­lar find­ings, where el­der­ly peo­ple with the low­est vi­t­a­min C had the high­est risk of dy­ing from stroke.

Vi­t­a­min C de­fi­cien­cy can al­so lead to anaemia, a low­ered abil­i­ty of the body to fight in­fec­tion and heal wounds, gin­givi­tis, nose­bleeds, and joint pain, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health. Adult men are rec­om­mend­ed to get 90 mil­ligrammes of vi­t­a­min C a day, while adult women are rec­om­mend­ed to get 75 mil­ligrammes of vi­t­a­min C a day. Vi­t­a­min C is found in many fruits and veg­eta­bles, in­clud­ing or­anges, broc­coli and pep­pers. (Huff­in­g­ton Post)


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