min C is no help in the fight against cancer

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor EVIDENCE that vitamin C may do as much harm as good is published today, reinforcing the view that taking supplements comes a poor second to eating a balanced diet.

Vitamin C, known to be a DNA-protecting "antioxidant", is also capable of inducing the production of DNA-damaging compounds that are linked to cancer, suggests a study in the journal Science.

Dr Ian Blair, a Briton now working at the Centre for Cancer Pharmacology, at Pennsylvania University, cautioned that the study should not be interpreted as a claim that vitamin C causes cancer since the two effects probably cancel each other.

Nor does it question the wisdom of eating a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, containing many additional "micronutrients" with health benefits. The findings, which come from test tube experiments, do shed light on why vitamin C has so far shown little effectiveness at preventing cancer in clinical trials.

"It's possible that vitamin C isn't working in cancer prevention studies because it's causing as much damage as it's preventing. But that's really speculation. What we can say is that vitamin C clearly doesn't work when you expect it to and now we're in a position to see if that's what's happening in living cells."

The study is also significant because his colleague, Dr Seon Hwa Lee, has developed a sensitive method to show how the cell makes DNA-damaging chemicals, called mutagens, offering a new way to investigate if chemicals with antioxidant effects do have cancer-preventing potential. Dr Blair said the work shows how the documented health effects of a diet rich in fruit and vegetables are due to much more than one or two vitamins in isolation.

"The logic being used for vitamin C supplements is that fruits, vegetables, and so on contain vitamin C. These foods prevent cancer and thus vitamin C prevents cancer." Dr Blair said: "Our message is that it's the total diet that's important, not just one antioxidant in isolation."

A separate study, conducted at Cornell University, found that vitamin C in apples was responsible for only a fraction of their anti-oxidant activity, most coming from phytochemicals in the flesh and skin. Vitamin C is known to do beneficial work in the body, including acting as an antioxidant that "disarms" free radicals.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2001

Answers

I go in spurts taking... then not for intervals, with anything in vit.or herbals, I think you should ingest and then let your body adjust for a while without, assess the situation, and redo.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2001