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Vitamins E, C ineffective in preventing heart disease

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vitamin E
vitamin C
The Physician's Health Study
strokes
MedStar
Journal of the American Medical Association
J. Michael Gaziano
Howard Sesso
heart attacks
dummy pills
cancer
Brigham and Women's Hospital
bleeding stroke
Barbara Howard

Two commonly used vitamins--E and C--apparently do nothing to stop heart disease in men, and may in fact, have negative affects according to a study by Drs. Howard Sesso and J. Michael Gaziano of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston called "The Physician's Health Study." It was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the study, just under 15,000 male doctors age 50 and older were put into four groups and given either vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or "dummy pills." Five percent of the men suffered from heart disease at the time of the study's launch in 1997.

While no difference was seen in the rates of heart attack, stroke or heart-related deaths, 39 men who took vitamin E had bleeding strokes, while 23 of those who did not take vitamin E experienced bleeding strokes. This means that those who took the vitamin had a 74 percent greater chance of suffering from a bleeding stroke.

For men who took vitamin C, it was discovered that such a practice might actually aid cancer rather than fight the disease. Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, MD, talked about the study this past Sunday at an American Heart Association conference. She believes that it could help out in more ways than one.

"In these hard economic times, maybe we can save some money by not buying these supplements," she said.

For more information:
- check out this Boston.com article

Related Article:
How effective are B vitamins against cancer?

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I am greatly saddened by this paper and by the results that are offered. As a wellness practioner, (post-doctoral degree in health and wellness) I have way too many questions to write here; but here are a few. What was the dosage of Vitamins E and C? What was the form? Did they just use apha-tocopherol or all of vitamin E? Did they just use ascorbate as vitamin C? I ask because the medical definition of vitamins E and C are very different from any other logical source of information. In fact, Linus Pauling was adamant that ascorbate was one part of Vitamin C but by itself it was extremely ineffective. It would not even cure scurvy by itself but a raw potato, having very little vitamin C but having the whole vitamin, would allow a person to slowly recover.

Does no one else get the fact that 23 AND 39 out of about 7,300 is clinically insignificant and cannot be linked to ANYTHING? It certainly cannot be linked to a statement that your are 74% more likely to have a bleeding stroke.

May I make a suggestion? Since the NIH, the JAMA the BMJ and WHO all show that the incidence and the severity of stroke, heart attack and related cardiovascular diseases have gone up every year, can we ask these 15,000 doctors to divide up and some take statins and some take vitamin E and C? At least their vitamins will do no harm.

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