Waarom Vitamine C en lysine nemen tegen atherosclerose

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Artikel met informatie (Engelstalig) over vitamine C en hoe het (samen met lysine) werkt tegen/bij hart- en vaatziekte (HVZ).

Lipoprotein A is kleverig spul en een risicofactor voor HVZ (plaques)… veel meer dan LDL-cholesterol dat is. Het is volgens Linus Pauling een soort surrogaat vitamine C, het wordt extra aangemaakt als er te weinig C is.

Mensen kunnen zelf geen vitamine C maken. Dagelijkse inname is dus belangrijk.
Vitamine C is o.a. nodig voor de produktie en reparatie van collageen (ook in de vaten).
Als er weinig vitamine C is voor reparatie van beschadigde bloedvaten met collageen, gaat het lichaam alternatieve “plakmiddelen” maken en gebruikt dan bv cholesterol en vooral lipoproteine A als stoffen om schade in de vaten te herstellen.

Linus Pauling combineerde de dosis C met lysine (een aminozuur).
De lysine vangt het teveel aan lipoproteine A weg.
(Statinen verlagen lipoproteine A niet).

Hart en bloedvaten kunnen niet gezond blijven en goed blijven functioneren als er te weinig vitamine C is.
Een muis kan zelf C maken, maar als bij een muis een bepaald gen wordt uitgeschakeld waardoor de muis geen C meer kan maken, gaat de muis snel tekenen van hartziekte vertonen.

Hier volgt een deel van het artikel:

Vitamin C and Cardiovascular Disease
A Personal Viewpoint by Alan Spencer and Andrew W. Saul

June 22, 2010

Linus Pauling was aware that studies of the animal kingdom showed that most animals have the ability to manufacture vitamin C in their bodies. Humans cannot. Furthermore, on average, mammals make 5,400mg daily when adjusted for body weight, and make more (often considerably more) when under stress or ill. This is about 100 times as much as the 50mg we get from a typical modern diet. It prompts the question, why do animals make so much vitamin C, and what purpose does it serve in the body?

A small number of animals which are known to share our inability to make vitamin C include the apes, the guinea pig, the fruit bat, and some birds, all of which will normally get a lot of vitamin C from their food. If you deprive a guinea pig of vitamin C it soon develops a form of cardiovascular disease (damage to its arteries showing within a few weeks). Similarly, studies of genetically modified mice have shown that if you switch off the gene that enables a mouse to produce vitamin C it will also soon show signs of heart disease. Re-introduction of a high vitamin C diet enables the damage to be reversed. While heart disease is rare in the animal kingdom, it is becoming a problem for apes in zoos where their diets are perhaps not as rich in vitamin C as when they are in the wild.

Collagen

A very important function of vitamin C in the body is its role in the production of collagen. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the body, and forms into fibres which are stronger than iron wire of comparable size. These fibres provide strength and stability to all body tissues, including the arteries.

Vitamin C is absolutely essential for the production and repair of collagen, and is destroyed during the process, so a regular supply of vitamin C is necessary to maintain the strength of body tissues. Severe deficiency of vitamin C causes the total breakdown of body tissue witnessed in scurvy.
Linus Pauling believed that whilst humans normally obtain sufficient vitamin C to prevent full-blown scurvy, we do not consume enough to maintain the strength of the walls of the arteries. He suggested that of all the structural tissues in the body, the walls of the arteries around the heart are subject to the greatest continual stress. Every time the heart beats the arteries are flattened and stretched, and this has been likened to standing on a garden hose thousands of times a day. Many tiny cracks and lesions develop and the artery walls become inflamed.

Dr. Pauling believed that in the presence of adequate supplies of vitamin C this damage can be readily repaired and heart disease is avoided. However, in the absence of adequate levels of vitamin C, the body attempts to repair the arteries using alternative materials: cholesterol and other fatty substances, which attach to the artery wall. (1-8)

Cholesterol and Lipoprotein (a), Lp(a)

The most abundant amino acids (protein building blocks) in collagen are lysine and proline, and when collagen strands are damaged lysine and proline become exposed. A special kind of cholesterol, lipoprotein(a), is attracted to lysine and proline and will attach itself to the exposed damaged collagen strands. It is an attempt by the body to repair damage to the collagen of the artery walls in the absence of adequate levels of vitamin C.
Unfortunately the repair is not ideal and over many years repeated deposits can cause the artery to become narrow and inflamed. Heart attack or stroke is likely to follow (usually caused by a clot forming at the site of the narrowed artery, or by a piece of plaque breaking off and blocking a smaller vessel downstream). When vitamin C levels are low, the body manufactures more cholesterol, especially Lp(a). Conversely, when vitamin C levels are high the body makes less cholesterol.

If high blood cholesterol were the primary cause of heart disease, all bears and other hibernating animals would have become extinct long ago. They naturally have high cholesterol levels. One reason bears are still with us is simple: they produce large amounts of vitamin C in their bodies, which stabilises the artery walls, and there is therefore no tendency to develop cholesterol deposits or plaque.

Keeping healthy

The low levels of vitamin C that are available through diet are inadequate to prevent many people developing arterial plaques, and over time this may result in cardiovascular disease.
Post mortem examinations showed that 77% of young American soldiers killed in the Korean war (average age 22) already had well-advanced atherosclerosis (heart disease), and post mortem studies from the Vietnam war gave similar results.
Heart disease is not just a disease of the elderly, although it does not usually become life threatening until later in life.

How can we prevent it? Pauling believed that once we start taking high levels of vitamin C, the disease process is halted, or at least slowed, as Lp(a) cholesterol is no longer needed as a repair material.

He also believed that when we take adequate levels of vitamin C, existing arterial plaques may start to be removed from the arteries.

He found that the removal of plaques is more rapid if the amino acid lysine is taken along with vitamin C. Lysine appears to attach to the Lp(a) in existing plaque deposits and helps to loosen them. Linus Pauling recommended at least 3000mg of vitamin C per day as a preventive dose, and significantly higher levels of both vitamin C and lysine for the treatment of existing heart disease. Dosage is a key factor: low doses are ineffective.[/quote]

Het artikel gaat nog verder (over doseringen en controverse en referenties)

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v06n20.shtml

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