Vitamin C Lowers Women's Risk of Gallbladder Disease

The gallbladder’s most important function is to store bile, a substance manufactured in the liver which helps the body digest fatty foods. Cholesterol is a normal component of bile; if too much cholesterol accumulates in the gallbladder, gallstones eventually result.

Because estrogen is an important risk factor for gallstone formation (it increases the concentration of cholesterol in bile), women are at particular risk for the disease. Experimental animal studies suggest that ascorbic acid (vitamin C) may play a role in preventing gallstones, an observation that led to a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

As part of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 7,042 women and 6,088 men provided data on vitamin C intake and the incidence of gallbladder disease. Results showed that increasing serum levels of ascorbic acid were related to a reduced risk for clinical and asymptomatic gallbladder disease in women, but not in men. Specifically, each standard increment increase in ascorbic acid level reduced the risk of a woman getting the disease by 13%.

Your chiropractor can provide you with more information on these results and suggest nutritional guidelines appropriate to your needs.

For additional information on women’s health, go to http://www.chiroweb.com/find/tellmeabout/women.html

For more information on nutrition, visit http://www.chiroweb.com/find/tellmeabout/nutrients.html

Reference:

Simon JA, Hudes ES. Serum ascorbic acid and gallbladder disease prevalence among U.S. adults. The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). Archives of Internal Medicine 2000: Vol. 160, pp931-36.