Is lowering blood pressure really as easy as taking vitamin C?

• Is lowering blood pressure really
• as easy as taking vitamin C?
• If you have high blood pressure, it can be extremely difficult to lower. Most doctors tell you to take medications, which work, but can have side effects. And you've read about a lot of possible natural treatments in Nutrient Insider that work. But could it be as easy as simply taking vitamin C? 
• Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine looked at 29 different studies to find the answer to that question. They wanted to know how taking vitamin C affects high blood pressure.
• Most of the people in these studies took an average of 500 mg of vitamin C daily. That's not very much. And they took that amount for about eight weeks. The researchers found that vitamin C can provide significant reductions in blood pressure overall. What's more, the vitamin C was even more effective the higher the blood pressure was at the outset. And it lowered both systolic and diastolic numbers.
• Interestingly, the researchers went into this study wanting to find out vitamin C's ability to produce nitric oxide. I've told you in the past how effective nitric oxide is at lowering your blood pressure. It helps dilate blood vessels and it improves the elasticity and strength of endothelial cells (these are the cells that form the outer layer of blood vessels' inner walls). Both of these effects lower blood pressure.
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• Back in 1992, Linus Pauling - often considered the father of vitamin C research - recommended taking lysine with vitamin C to prevent heart problems. He said, "We can get almost complete control of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and strokes by the proper use of vitamin C and lysine. It can prevent cardiovascular disease and even cure it. If you are at risk of heart disease, ... or if you have had a mild heart attack yourself, then you had better be taking vitamin C and lysine."
• I agree completely. And I think you need to take more than the 500 mg average of these studies. Most integrative physicians say you need at least 1,200 mg daily. This is the amount contained in Healthy Resolve. As for lysine, you can take as much as 1,000 mg three times daily if your blood pressure is very high. Lower the amount as your pressure comes down.
• If you try this combination, please let me know how it works for you. If it doesn't lower your blood pressure, your body may not be converting the vitamin C to nitric oxide. In that case, you'll want to take CircO2, which more directly produces nitric oxide.
• Your insider for better health,
• Steve Kroening
• Sources: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/95/5/1079.full
• http://www.vitasearch.com/get-clp-summary/40211.
  
  
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  Effects of vitamin C supplementation on blood pressure: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled...
  ajcn.nutrition.org↵3 Address correspondence to ER Miller III, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, 2024 East Monument Street, Suite 1-500, Baltimore, MD 21205. E-mail: