by Edie Summers

Created on: December 21, 2008   Last Updated: February 10, 2009

Vitamins & Disease Prevention

Remember scurvy? What seems to be an obscure condition that only affected sailors lost at sea actually has a close - and more serious connection - to heart disease, even cancer prevention or maintenance, and the state of your skin (including wrinkles) than you might know.

Hypoascorbemia, or scurvy, is a genetic disease wherein the body fails to produce the enzyme l-gulonolactone oxidase in the liver which prevents us from synthesizing our own ascorbic acid. Whereas 99.9% of all animals produce ascorbic acid - commonly referred to as Vitamin C - for general health and more in response to stress and viral infections, humans have been suffering from lack of this life-lengthening trait for over 40 million years. Only some types of monkeys, guinea pigs, and an Indian fruit eating bat share our missing enzyme. Maybe we're not so superior afterall.

What does all this have to do with conditions like heart disease? Contrary to popular medical opinion (remember, medicine is 50% science and 50% art), which blames cholesterol as the primary villain of atherosclerosis, one of the main - and highly preventable - causes of cardiovascular disease is the lack of certain sufficient vitamins and minerals. In fact, it is the lack of Vitamin C in mineral ascorbate form that has the most damaging effect on the hardening of arteries.

Vitamin C is a necessary building block for the tissues in our body. And much like the essential fatty acids omega 3 and omega 6, we do not produce them ourselves. Vitamin C is especially important for the tissue strength of our arteries, since they are under constant pressure. Without proper levels of Vitamin C, our arteries cannot maintain this pressure and they begin to bleed. After bleeding, the arteries begin to crust over, with the end result being, among other side effects, a decrease in blood flow. What most people don't realize is that many of us are in a very mild state of scurvy most of the time.

Vitamin C is the primary building block of collagen. In fact, collagen is ascorbic acid dependent. Collagen makes up about one third of our bodies' protein. Collagen breakdown has been linked to rheumatoid arthritis, vascular problems (such as broken capillaries), and wrinkles. Sub-clinical levels of Vitamin C have been linked to leukemia as well.

Vitamin C in mega-doses has been used therapeutically for many types of disease states, most notably for cancer detox (intravenous). It is a well-known anti-oxidant, helps with

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