A viewer asks: “The thing I have encountered in my studies is that plaque buildup in arteries may be a result of a vitamin C deficiency. Vitamin C is claimed to be the ultimate anti-toxin and it is speculated that when not enough vitamin C is available via blood flow through the arteries, toxins can damage cells in the arterial wall, and the body’s natural response is to “protect” the wall with a coating of cholesterol. The cholesterol is not the “problem,” the vitamin C deficiency is. Some have claimed that plaque issues resolve when enough vitamin C is administered over time.” Is this view correct?

This is a partial truth but is accurate up to a point. The true culprit in cellular injury, in many cases, is oxidative damage as a consequence of inflammation. Because vitamin C has antioxidant activity, it confers protection from many types of oxidative damage, so if it is present in sufficient concentrations, it will counteract the damaging effects being generated intracellularly. This is why it has been thought to have a link to cancer protection as well. It can have such benefits—the problem is keeping it present in quite high concentrations needed to be fully effective in this way. It is not practical to achieve this without intravenous infusions of high concentrations of vitamin C. That is not a practical chronic therapy so the ideas and concepts here are not unsound, it is just that the practical achievement of using vitamin C as a cure for such conditions is not feasible. It can be one of a group of antioxidants and that makes better sense, as a practical matter, to have supplements with antioxidant activity used in combination as their varying bioavailabilities, durations of action, and metabolism will spread the benefits and any potential liabilities will be diluted. As a goal, the fighting of inflammation and its consequences will have many, many benefits but it will need more powerful players than vitamin C to be optimal.