Cardiovascular disease is an umbrella term for a number of disorders that effect the health of the blood vessels and heart, and both heart attacks and stoke are leading causes of death in Western countries. The relationship between the risk of cardiovascular disease and dietary intakes of various foods and nutrients have been extensively researched. Fruits and vegetables contain a number of nutrients such as folic acid, vitamin C, flavonoids and carotenoids, which are all suspected of protecting against development of cardiovascular disease; and diets that are high in fruits and vegetables have consistently demonstrated protective effects against heart disease in research. For example, in a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2003 researchers investigated the fruit and vegetables intake of Danish people in relation to ischaemic stroke.
The molecular structure of vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
The researchers analysed food records of thousands of people from a previous study and then investigated data to see how many had been subsequently hospitalised with ischaemic strokes. They found the intake of fruit and vegetable and the risk of stroke was a inversely correlated. Therefore, the more fruit and vegetables the subjects ate, the lower their chance of stroke. However the inverse association was only statistically significant for citrus fruit. Citrus fruit is a good source of vitamin C which is likely why it had a protective effect. Linus Pauling suggested in his unifying theory of cardiovascular disease (here) that vitamin C deficiency causes damage to the endothelial lining of blood vessels. Increasing dietary sources of citrus fruit and supplementation with additional vitamin C would therefore appear to be an important component of optimum nutrition.
RdB
