New Research: Vitamin D May Lower Heart Disease Risk
Medical researchers are discovering a greater relationship between heart disease and vitamin D -- a nutrient already linked to reducing certain cancers.
Studies announced Wednesday at an American Heart Association's conference on cardiovascular health showed an increased association between people with high levels of vitamin D and a lower risk of heart disease.
Adolescents in particular could face long-term implications if they don't get enough of the vitamin, which can be absorbed through exposure to the sun and is found in certain fishes and in popular fortified foods, including milk and cereal.
One study found that American teens with low levels of vitamin D in their blood were almost four times more likely to have metabolic syndrome, a cluster of heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and abdominal fat.
"If you have other risk factors like obesity, you should be hyper-vigilant," said Jared Reis, a post-doctoral research fellow at The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore. His study, presented at the conference at the Innisbrook Resort, looked at health data of more than 3,500 American teens from 2001-2004.
Although cardiovascular research about the nutrient is still evolving, previous studies have linked vitamin D intake to lower risks of colon, prostate and breast cancers, according to the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements. Together with calcium, it also has been historically used to supplement bone health.
This news comes at a time when Americans appear to be decreasing their vitamin D intake. The percentage of Americans deficient in the nutrient increased to 9.2 percent in 2005-06, from 2.6 percent in 1988-94, said researcher Sandy Saintonge of the New York Hospital Queens.
If you aren't taking vitamin D I recommend at least 1000 IUs daily, preferably 2000IUs. Carlson's Vitamin D is cheap ($5.50) and easy to take, so why wouldn't you?
(Acknowledgments: McClatchy-Tribune Information Services and Mary Shedden of the Tampa Tribune)
Labels: blood pressure, calcium, cancer, fat, heart disease, obesity, study, vitamin d
Jonny Bowden, PhD, C.N.S. is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health and is the author of several best-selling books.
I wonder if this is correlation rather than causation. Fro instance, if you had a higher intake of animal products and saturated fats (as Weston Price documented) you would have a higher intake of Vitamin D and K. If you didn't eat many high-fat animal products, and ate a lot of polyunsaturated fats, you would also have a lower Vitamin D and K intake.
Maybe its the saturated, rather than unsaturated fat content that's driving the heart disease numbers....
Omega-6 Fat News & Commentary has a nice graph from Bill Lands here showing the link between Omega 6 intake and cardiovascular disease. Worth reading the text as well.
While it is true vitamin D is fat soluble so those who eat lard butter and other saturated fats may have slightly higher vitamin D status, the amounts of Vit D in those foods are so trivial that it would be virtually impossible to detect differences in disease outcomes. Possibly those consuming a portion of oily fish daily would have a significant difference but then you could argue it's the improved omega3<>Omega6 ratio that is reducing the heart disease as well as the slightly improved D3 status
If you watch the YOU TUBE VIDEO Vitamin D and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention from David Sane you will have a better understanding of the evidence for higher vitamin D status preventing heart disease.
Stephan Wholehealthsource has an interesting blog on the way higher levels of Vitamin K2 (found in butter) is strongly associated with lower heart disease incidence.
Yes, I was thinking of Stephan's posts (and Weston Price's research) when I was writing my comment above.
I'm not sure (nor would Dr. Price be, I don't think) that your comment about trivial differences in Vitamin D levels is really supported by the research.
And it isn't just D, it's also K, as you point out. I wasn't suggesting it was the saturated fat, but rather the other things that came with the saturated fat. Though, in fact, there is a fair amount of research supporting a protective effect of saturated fat in terms of heart disease.
It has been argued (by Peter at Hyperlipid) among other places that the real danger is oxidized LDL particles. And fat particles that are already saturated are not prone to oxidation.
So again, we're still looking at correlation here at this point, and there are many confounding factors.
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