Keto Diet App - Free Download Keto Diet App - Free Download
Take the guesswork out of following a low-carb diet, lose body fat & feel great!
KetoDiet app is FREE to download!

Vitamin C
Why Is It So Important For Heart Health?

5 stars, average of 11 ratings

This post may contain affiliate links, see our disclaimer.
Expert ArticleEvidence Based

Vitamin C: Why Is It So Important For Heart Health?ShareFollow us 261.1k

Quick Summary tl;dr

Atherosclerotic plaques develop when damage to artery walls cannot be repaired and an internal clot develops instead to prevent excess bleeding.

Vitamin C is needed to repair damaged artery walls by promoting the formation of collagen, the main structural component of blood vessels.

Lp(a) is presumed to be an evolutionary surrogate for Vitamin C. This hypothesis was first put forth by Linus Pauling. Pauling is the only person in history to ever be awarded two Nobel Prizes ( 2).

Human experiments to see if high-dose vitamin C supplementation can lower Lp(a) and heart risk in humans with high Lp(a) are currently ongoing ( 6).

A car is driving along the highway when… SMASH… car crash! It’s a 10-car pileup and the road is wrecked. Of course, the first priority is to cordon off the space to prevent further damage. This necessarily congests traffic.

But, because nobody was hurt, once the cars are removed and the highway is repaired with new asphalt, the blockade is removed, and traffic continues as normal; it is as if nothing had happened.

But what if there wasn’t enough new asphalt to repair the road? The blockade would have to stay up and traffic would remain congested. Furthermore, as more and more car accidents occurred overtime, the highway would become more damaged, the number and size of blockades would grow, and the highway would eventually need to be shutdown.

This, of course, is an analogy. In this analogy, the highway is your arteries, the blockade is a clot (a.k.a. an atherosclerotic plaque) and the new asphalt is collagen, the substance used to build artery walls.

Free Holiday Survival Guide plus 4 Free Diet Plans

The Role of Vitamin C in Collagen Formation and the Accumulation of Lp(a) Deposits

I also want to introduce two more metabolic players: Vitamin C and Lp(a). Vitamin C you know as the antioxidant present in oranges, but it is also an essential player in collagen formation ( 1).

Procollagen, the precursor to collagen, requires “lysine and proline hydroxylation” to become the mature collagen that is needed to repair the artery highway. Therefore, if you don’t have enough vitamin C, you can’t make collagen (new asphalt) and the artery highway remains broken.

Vitamin C is needed to repair damaged artery walls by promoting the formation of collagen, the main structural component of blood vessels.

Lp(a) is a lipoprotein (it is similar to LDL cholesterol particles, but with a tail) that acts like the physical barriers blocking off traffic (or orange cones) in our analogy. In arteries, Lp(a) binds to the damaged area and promotes clotting. In the short term, this is good as it prevents excess bleeding. However, in the absence of vitamin C, Lp(a) blockades accumulate, leading to eventual complete highway closure ( 2,  3).

So, let’s review. The highway is your arteries, the blockade is a clot (atherosclerotic plaque), the new asphalt is collagen, which requires vitamin C to be produced, and Lp(a) is the physical barrier blocking off traffic. If you don’t have vitamin C, Lp(a) deposits — the atherosclerotic plaque — grows, and eventually you end up with serious heart disease.

When it comes to heart health, we need vitamin C to prevent Lp(a) deposits from accumulating. Atherosclerotic plaques develop when damage to artery walls cannot be repaired and an internal clot develops instead to prevent excess bleeding.

How Much Vitamin C Do Humans Need?

So, now that you know all about why vitamin C is important in heart health, I want to share two animal fun facts with you that might make you think twice about how much vitamin C you might want to get through your diet and supplements each day.

First, animals that can produce their own vitamin C from glucose ( 4), which includes most animals, don’t tend to get heart disease. By contrast, those who can’t produce vitamin C, specifically primates and guinea pigs ( 5), are prone to heart disease.

You can give a guinea pig heart disease by simply removing vitamin C from its diet, even if its diet lacks cholesterol. Second, goats make more vitamin C in their bodies than any other animal. The average 70 kg goat (which is the same weight as your typical fully grown woman) makes 13,300 mg of vitamin C per day.

By contrast, the human recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is a measly 75 mg for women and 90 mg for men, the amount required to just barely avoid getting scurvy. What’s more, when goats are stressed or becoming sick, they bump their vitamin C production by 10-100-fold! That means a stressed goat is producing 15,000-times more vitamin C per day than is currently clinically recommended for the averaged stressed human (and most of us are stressed most of the time).

Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and red bell peppers are all great low-carb, keto-friendly sources of vitamin C.

If you’re a visual learner, Martina and I helped Thomas DeLauer produce a video on this topic that you can find here.

For more science-backed articles related to this topic, read the posts below:

The #1 Keto Diet App
Keto Diet App for iOS and Android
Free Download
Trialed & tested for best results
Optimized for nutrition
Never feel hungry
Track all macros including net carbs
Scan products
Create your own meals
Track ketones, blood glucose & lipids
Stay hydrated with water tracking
Track your mood & energy levels
Calculate your ideal fat, protein & carb intake
Set any goal: weight loss, maintenance or weight gain
Your macros update based on your progress
Monitor your macros, water intake, mood & energy
Body weight, body fat and body measurements
Ketones, blood glucose & lipids
Expert articles to help you make informed choices
Guides & free diet plans
New daily content
Complete Keto Diet guide
Integrated shopping basket
Restaurants & guide to eating out
Free Download

Do you like this post? Share it with your friends! 

KetoDiet Team
Team at KetoDietApp.com

Our team of health professionals ensures accurate and up-to-date information.

Expert Article

This article was written by KetoDiet Team who is a qualified expert. At KetoDiet we work with a team of health professionals to ensure accurate and up-to-date information. You can find out more on the About us page.

Evidence Based

Evidence-Based articles are based on medical research, and scientific evidence. Our expert authors focus on hard evidence alone and include relevant research references from trusted sources to support their articles. We always aim to deliver relevant, trustworthy and up-to-date information based on trusted evidence and proven research.

Let us know what you think, rate this post!

Leave a comment

Note: Any links to products or affiliate links will not be approved.
Please note that we do not offer personalised advice. For any diet related questions, please join our Facebook community.

Comments (5)

How did our ancestors get sufficient Vitamin-C without any supplements? Isn't 300mg Vitamin-C per day enough for most?

You know how real estate is all about "location, location, location"? Well, nutrition is all about "context, context, context."
You're 100% correct that our ancestors were not doing to be getting probably even the RDA of vitamin C (which is 90 mg), but they also lived and ate very differently such that they ran a lower risk of heart disease and had lower vitamin C needs.
I could go on forever about context, evolution and nutrition, but can answer your question most quickly by sharing data from a self experiment I did in which I ate only animal products, including organ meats, for two months. I had no vegetables of any kind and my vitamin C intake was, on average, only about 20 mg per day. You'd think I would be deficient after that time period, right? I might even have scurvy? Nope, in fact, my vitamin C levels were optimal / high!
It get's complicated... NADPH... vitamin C recycling... redundancy with other antioxidant systems... possible endogenous synthesis upon intestinal colonization (that one is speculative)... etc. But the point is this: most people in the developed world would benefit from more vitamin C because most people are at evaluated risk of cardiovascular disease due to pathologies than harm blood vessels like oxidative stress and inflammation.
If you live like our evolutionary ancestors, then I probably wouldn't recommend higher doses of vitamin C. I hope that makes sense and thank you for the great question!

I love eating low carb, every day I learn something new! Nick, I was wondering what your thoughts are on carnivore keto. Is it true that if you go carnivore you won't need as much vitamin C as others that are not carnivore? There isn't much vitamin C in animals and we can't make it...

At the risk of offending the carnivores, I am going to say yes with three caveats: (i) there is a lot we don't know about the microbiome and it's feasible (although unlikely) that the carnivore microbiome adapts and produces some vitamin C [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC522139/] (ii) if you eat nose to nail, e.g. organ meat like liver, you get some vitamin C that, in the absence of glucose, doesn't have to compete for absorption (glucose and vitamin C use the same transporters) (iii) sometimes people need to choose between the lesser of two evils. While I do not think carnivore is optimal for most people (and we are evolutionarily an omnivorous species), there may be a select few who do better on a plant-free diet (perhaps the Petersons are such a case). Hope that helps.

Thank you so much!