Vitamins C and E Fight Artery Damage

New research shows that vitamins C and E may save you from heart disease. In fact, those vitamins promise to reverse damage to arteries brought on by a high-fat diet, according to Dr. Anthony Verlangieri, professor of pharmacology at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy.

For six years Verlangieri observed the effects of doses of vitamins C and E on monkeys fed lard and cholesterol to give them heart disease. His findings:

Both Vitamin E or Vitamin C slowed the progression of artery damage, and thus heart disease, by 50%. The vitamins also caused a healing or regression of the arterial damage amounting to about 30%. Thus, both vitamins E and C separately prevented and reversed heart disease in the test animal most like humans.

The doses were high but safe. As a result of his research, Verlangieri takes 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams of Vitamin C and 200 to 400 international units (IU) of Vitamin E daily. He also says his research helps explain why eating lots of fruit and vegetables, rich in Vitamin C, also cut heart disease risk.

Men who drink two to three beers a day over a lifetime boost their chances of getting rectal cancer. So say researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

In a new study, they calculated the lifetime intake of total alcohol, beer, wine and hard liquor for 277 men and 145 women with cancer of the rectum--and then compared that to the alcohol consumption of similar men and women without the cancer.

The researchers concluded that lifetime heavy drinkers, especially male beer drinkers, were more likely to develop the cancer. But drinking wine and hard liquor was not linked to the cancer.

The scientists speculate that alcohol itself stimulates rectal cancer and that beer has an added hazard of being contaminated with other cancer-causing chemicals.

In other research, heavy beer drinkers have been found more vulnerable to cancer of the lower urinary tract and lung--regardless of whether they smoked.