Lower Your Hypertension: Vitamin C Might Improve Blood Pressure

An Italian researcher discovered that Vitamin C might help lower the hypertension and calm the overactive central nervous system.

The leader author of this study, Dr. Rosa Maria Bruno, from the University of Pisa, said that Vitamin C, used intravenously, reduces the overactive nervous system and blood pressure. This targets the oxidative stress, which is the main cause of hypertension. Blood pressure is one of the non-voluntary activities and is controlled by the body’s central nervous system. The SNS, as Bruno explained, which means sympathetic nervous system, is a part of the central nervous system of the body. Organ damage and elevated blood pressure are results of the over activity of the system. The findings of the Italian team will be presented at the American Heart Association’s Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research, which should take place Friday, in Atlanta.

It seems that there are other researchers which tried to demonstrate, before the Italian team, that vitamin C and a few other antioxidant nutrients could help lower the hypertension. For instance, British authors revealed in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that strokes could be prevented by taking vitamin C.

Bruno and her team chose 12 patients who suffered from hypertension, without knowing what causes it. The procedure was to administer intravenously three grams of vitamin C and afterwards monitor their blood pressure and SNS activity. The results showed that the SNS activity dropped by approximately 11 percent and the patients blood pressure dropped by nearly 7 percent.

Although this is a way to go, the director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital's Heart and Vascular Institute in New York City, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, explained that, because of the high amount of vitamin C, there could be side effects."This finding is certainly not going to make me or anyone else run out and start giving vitamin C intravenously to our patients”, she added.