Vitamins that may--or may not--prevent Alzheimer's
By Josh Fischman
At the least, taking supplements of vitamin E and vitamin C together isn't going to hurt you. At the most, the combo might stave off Alzheimer's disease.
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Both vitamins are antioxidants, which help the body ward off all kinds of tissue damage. So taking them is a healthy habit. Because some older studies had hinted that vitamins might have some anti-Alzheimer's effect, researchers wanted to find out if vitamin users reduced their chances of getting Alzheimer's disease. In the January issue of the Archives of Neurology, they report that they started out with more than 4,000 people ages 65 and older. In 1995 these folks were asked about their vitamin use. Then, over the following five years, they were exhaustively examined for signs of Alzheimer's. A few hundred of these people did develop the mind-stealing illness.
People were a lot less likely to be in that Alzheimer's group if they initially reported taking vitamin E and vitamin C supplements. And the combination was key: E or C alone didn't help, nor did other vitamins such as B, nor did multivitamins. Part of the reason may be the higher doses in supplements. There's usually about 75 to 90 micrograms of vitamin C in a multivitamin, for example, while a supplement can have 1,000 micrograms or more. And the combination may have some kind of synergistic effect. This is pure speculation, but vitamin E, which sticks around longer in the body, may be reinforced somehow by the repeated doses of short-acting vitamin C and may exert its antioxidant effects over an extended period of time.
Here come the "buts." Since the researchers only asked about vitamin use once, at the beginning of the study, they don't really know if people took these vitamins over a long period of time or whether that contributed to protection. Also, the people who did not get Alzheimer's tended to have healthier lifestyles in general, and that factor–not the supplements–could have a lot to do with their resistance to the disease. What's needed now are some long-term prevention studies, in which people are given some combination of vitamins and then followed for several years to see if the vitamins prevent dementia. So don't go gobbling antioxidants because you think they should be renamed "anti-Alzheimer's." At least not yet.
