Smokers benefit from vitamin C supplement

Treatment helps maintain levels of protective antioxidant nutrients
Researchers have found that a smoking habit depletes the body of essential antioxidant vitamins, but taking supplements can help restore the balance. In fact, taking vitamin C supplements not only increases levels of this nutrient but also blocks the depletion of vitamin E, according to Maret Traber of Oregon State University's Linus Pauling Institute.

Vitamins C and E are antioxidants that help protect cells from damaging molecules called free radicals that are generated inside the body and are also present in cigarette smoke and other pollutants.
Traber and her colleagues studied 11 smokers and 13 nonsmokers, asking them to eat a diet low in fruits and vegetables for three months so they had low levels of vitamin C. One group of smokers and nonsmokers then took 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C each day, while a second group took inactive pills.
Smokers who received the vitamin C supplements lost vitamin E from their blood at about the same rate as nonsmokers. But smokers who were still deficient in vitamin C lost vitamin E about 25 to 45 per cent faster than nonsmokers.

"A lot of nutrition research in the past has been done by studying one nutrient or another in isolation, sometimes with conflicting results," Traber says in a statement. "What this and other studies like it are showing is that the protection we get from proper diet or supplements often comes from combinations of nutrients working together. This has implications not only for smokers but also for many other people."

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