Could Vitamin C Be As Effective as Exercise for Obese Patients?

A new study finds that vitamin C supplements could be as effective as exercise as a lifestyle strategy for overweight and obese adult patients.

Caitlin Dow, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado, and colleagues evaluated 35 obese or overweight adults, comparing the effects of vitamin C and exercise on the protein endothelin-1, which is known to constrict small blood vessels—a significant issue among obese and overweight patients.
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Dow and her co-authors explain that the protein’s activity is greater in overweight and obese adults. As such, the small blood vessels are more likely to constrict, becoming less responsive to blood flow demand and upping vascular disease risk. In presenting the findings at the 14th International Conference on Endothelin: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Therapeutics, held Sept. 2 - 5 in Savannah, Georgia, Dow noted that exercise is known to reduce endothelin-1 activity, but getting exercise on a daily basis can be difficult.

In the study, 20 participants completed 3 months of either vitamin C supplementations, while the remaining 15 patients participated in aerobic exercise training. The measures used by the researchers included forearm blood blow and responses to intra-arterial infusion of endothelin-1 before and after each intervention. The authors found that daily supplementation of vitamin C at a time-release dose of 500 mg daily proved to reduce endothelin-1-related blood vessel constriction as much as walking did.

Dow cautions that “the application of this study is still fairly limited,” adding that “we certainly don’t think that most patients should be advised to not exercise, as exercise is known to beneficially affect nearly every system in the human body.”

However, vitamin C may be a feasible lifestyle strategy for improving the vascular function of adults who are overweight or obese and can’t do regular aerobic exercise, she says, adding that “more research will be needed to determine if or how vitamin C compares to exercise in other physiological systems.”

—Mark McGraw