HEALTH NEWS

STUDY: VITAMIN C REDUCES STROKE RISK

High levels of vitamin C in the bloodstream reduces the risk of stroke by 70%, according to a study published in Stroke, Journal of the US American Heart Association.

Over a 20-year period, researchers separated 880 men and 1,214 women in rural Japan into four groups based on the level of Vitamin C in their blood. Among the study's participants, 196 suffered strokes over the 20 years.

"This is the first prospective study to make the correlation between vitamin C in the bloodstream and incidence of stroke," said the study's lead author Tetsuji Yokoyama, a researcher at the Medical Research Institute of Tokyo Medical and Dental University. "The risk of stroke was 70 per cent higher among those in the lowest quarter than those in the highest," he said, noting that those numbers were directly associated with fruit and vegetable consumption.

An increase in fruit and vegetable consumption, as well as other foods with high concentrations of Vitamin C, has been associated with a lower risk of stroke in previous studies. Even high risk behaviour, including high blood pressure, smoking or heavy alcohol consumption, was somewhat offset by high concentrations of Vitamin C, Yokoyama said.

Source: The New Straits Times, 8 October 2000

QUOTES OF THE MONTH

"If you think wellness is expensive, try illness."
- Dr Noordin Darus, The Art of Total Wellness

"The aim of medicine is to maintain or improve the quality of the patient's remaining life in this world, not to prevent death or prolong life."
- Robert Schuller

"Most undertakings that have been completed successfully often had formulas to be followed."
- Anonymous

The poor think that they will be happy when they become rich. The rich think that they will be happy when they are rid of their ulcers.
- Anthony de Mello, S.J., The Prayer of the Frog (X. Diaz del Rio, Gujerat)