Vitamin C - a Natural Remedy for High Cholesterol

High cholesterol: two words that strike fear into the hearts of many people. High cholesterol: something that can strike more than fear into a person’s heart if it goes untreated. Conventional medications for the treatment of high cholesterol may or may not be effective, but they certainly cause side effects: muscle pain, nausea, and if taken for too long, liver damage. Clearly medication is not a long-term measure, which is why many people try to find a natural remedy for high cholesterol; something that can lower cholesterol levels, and keep them down. Is Vitamin C a natural remedy for high cholesterol? That is what we will discuss in this article. But first…

The Skinny on Cholesterol

The truth is that most of the cholesterol in your body does not come from the diet, but is produced by your own body. What? How could your own body do such a thing to you! But cholesterol is vital for the body to function, as it is used in cell repair and maintenance. When doctors or nutritionists talk about high cholesterol, they are referring to the amount of cholesterol in the blood. Cholesterol travels in the blood so that it can be used anywhere in the body as and when it is needed. However, if blood levels become too high, cholesterol deposits itself onto the walls of your arteries, as a kind of “plaque.” As the cholesterol builds up, the blood has less and less space to travel through the arteries. This causes a build-up in pressure, and high cholesterol easily leads onto hypertension, and hypertension severely increases the risk of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke.

So, a natural remedy for high cholesterol must seek to lower cholesterol in the blood, rather than eliminating it all together. What natural supplement could help in this?

Vitamin C’s role in High Cholesterol Treatment

Vitamin C is considered an excellent natural remedy for high cholesterol because of its properties in dealing with the effects of high cholesterol and because it actively reduces cholesterol levels in the blood.

Vitamin C deals with the effects of high cholesterol

Vitamin C is a good natural remedy for high cholesterol because it helps to widen arteries and so minimize the effect of cholesterol deposits on the artery walls. A study conducted on rabbits showed that high doses of Vitamin C can prevent the narrowing of arteries by anywhere between 4% and a whopping 50%. Counteracting the effects of high cholesterol in this way effectively “buys time” for you, so that Vitamin C can reduce cholesterol in other ways.

Vitamin C deals with the cholesterol in your blood

Vitamin C also helps in increasing fibrinolytic activity, which is responsible for removing cholesterol plaque from the arteries. A number of studies conducted on animals suggest that Vitamin C can reverse plaque formation caused by high cholesterol, making it an excellent natural remedy for high cholesterol. Vitamin C also eliminates excess cholesterol in the bloodstream by converting it to bile.

Vitamin C keeps the cholesterol levels down

Vitamin C isn’t just a natural remedy for high cholesterol, it can also maintain healthy levels of cholesterol in the blood. There is a continuous recycling process where excess cholesterol in the blood is removed and converted to bile (as mentioned above). This process only occurs when you have enough Vitamin C in your body. However, in the absence of enough Vitamin C, the conversion of cholesterol into bile is affected and cholesterol accumulates in the bloodstream.

Vitamin C does all of the above. Safely

Vitamin C is also incredibly safe compared to high cholesterol medications, and even compared to other vitamins, having no known fatal dosage or side-effects. If Vitamin C is taken in extremely high dosages then minor side-effects can occur, such as stomachache or diarrhea, but we’re talking huge dosages here. People have been reported taking 150 times the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C (RDA of around 100mg). Up to 2000mg of Vitamin C daily is considered by most experts to be completely safe, with no harmful side effects.

Bottom line: Vitamin C safely deals with the effects of high cholesterol, lowers cholesterol, and then keeps it down.