Vitamin C Supplementation & Breast Cancer

Vitamin C and breast cancer

In the United States, one out of eight women develops breast cancer at some point in their life, and an estimated 41,760 women die each year from this cancer as do more than 500 men. New research from Sweden finds that the risk of dying from breast cancer is significantly reduced with use of supplemental vitamin C.

Swedish Meta-Analysis

A large meta-analysis of 13 studies on breast cancer and vitamin C reported that women who supplemented with vitamin C after their breast cancer diagnosis experienced a much better outcome than those who did not (1).

Specifically, women who supplemented with vitamin C after their breast cancer diagnosis experienced:

  • An almost 20% reduction in risk of all-cause mortality
  • A 15% decrease in risk of breast-cancer specific mortality

Alkaline for Life Comment:

This was a large analysis of 13 studies totaling 17,696 cases of breast cancer, so the results are significant. We do not know just how much vitamin C any woman took, but what we do know is that for every 100 mg increase in vitamin C there were more beneficial results. From our point of view, these positive results are to be expected.

Even back in 1996 it was reported that the vitamin C blood levels of breast cancer patients decreased with each advancing stage of breast cancer (2). This is consistent with our knowledge that vitamin C is more rapidly used up under oxidative stress, inflammatory conditions, and infections. 

Here at Alkaline for Life® we suggest all health-minded individuals use daily at least 3,000 mg of high quality fully buffered, fully reduced ascorbate/vitamin C powder.

References:

  1. Harris, H. R., et al. 2014. Vitamin C and survival among women with breast cancer: A meta-analysis. European Journal of Cancer 50(7):1223–1231. doi:10.1016/j.ejca.2014.02.013.
  2. Ramaswamy, G., and L. Krishnamoorthy. 1996. Serum carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin C levels in breast cancer and cancer of the uterine cervix. Nutrition and Cancer 25(2):173–177.