Vitamin C’s Effect on My Blood Pressure

(by Mary) — I had never had high blood pressure until after I experienced a very difficult pregnancy followed by a surgery for an e Coli infection for which I was hospitalized for 6 days.  After the surgery I developed a debilitating Achilles tendonitis for no known reason which persisted for a year despite physical therapy.  I always thought the onset of my high blood pressure was related to these events, but none of the doctors I saw seemed to think so.

I was overweight, and in my 40s, and that was enough reason for them.  I was put on the ace inhibitor Lisinopril, the immediate effect of which was fatigue and a fullness and stiffness of my legs that made it impossible to continue doing the yoga I had been doing, and if I exercised for more than a short time, my legs would hurt badly and I would have to lie down.  I wanted very much to get off the medication, so I continued to exercise as much as I could, but my blood pressure continued to increase, and the doctors kept increasing my medication, and my weight increased with every increase in dose.  It was impossible for me to reverse this terrible spiral.

Earlier this year I went to the emergency room with skyrocketing blood pressure, 180/120, on the way to my own personal heart attack or stroke.  My EKG was normal, and the doctor prescribed a beta blocker to go with my lisinopril, but I stopped taking it after one or two days when I read that it would make me gain even more weight.  I was desperate, and so depressed.

I began to research high blood pressure, and my a sheer coincidence I came across the research on vitamin C and high blood pressure that has always been there and realized that I was vitamin C deficient, that I had probably always been marginally vitamin C deficient, and that the stress of the difficult pregnancy and the surgery had brought me to a critical level of deficiency resulting in the tendonitis and the high blood pressure.  In 3 months, by doing no more than taking vitamin C, I got my blood pressure down to 138/86 on half the medication I had previously been on.

My fatigue, depression and knee pain improved dramatically.  You might be surprised to learn that these are all well known symptoms of vitamin C deficiency.  There is so much research on vitamin C and high blood pressure that you would be shocked, as I was, that your doctor hasn’t discussed such a harmless possible remedy with you.  In 2009, in fact, a medical study was published about a young girl with severe hypertension and debilitating knee pain which were cured by supplementation with vitamin C.  After many, many other tests, the doctors determined she was suffering from vitamin C deficiency.  I have been spending the last several months researching the medical studies on Pubmed and am in the process of setting up a website with hyperlinks to the relevant studies.

If you don’t eat citrus daily, don’t take a multivitamin, and have experienced a severe physical stress such as traumatic injury or surgery, it is likely that you are vitamin C deficient as well.  Best of luck to all of you.

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