Vitamins Reduce Heart Disease Risk

Not only beneficial to maintain the vitality and endurance, regular vitamin intake can prevent certain diseases. One of them heart disease. 

Vitamins are essential nutrients without the calories and necessary for human metabolism. Vitamins can not be produced by the human body, but food is obtained from daily activities. The specific function of vitamin is a cofactor (helper element) for enzymatic reactions. 

Vitamins also play a role in various other body functions, including regeneration of the skin, eyesight, nervous system, immune system, and blood clotting. The body needs a different amount for each vitamin. Every person has different vitamin requirements. 

Recent research shows that eating regular multivitamin may help women without cardiovascular disease to prevent heart attacks. However, the efficacy of vitamin pills does not appear to be influential in women who had suffered from heart disease. The study was conducted by Dr. Susanne Rautiainen and colleagues at the Karolinska Instituted in Stockholm, Sweden. 

These findings do not provide an answer to the question of whether vitamin useful as a prevention of disease. "It's important to remember that multivitamin users tend to be healthier in general. They usually will reduce smoking, more physically active, and have a healthy diet, "says Rautiainen. 

"Even if we have been controlled by a number of factors associated with healthy behaviors, we can not rule out the possibility that we can measure our healthy lifestyle through use multivitamins," he said as quoted by Reuters. Known, about half of U.S. adults reported taking a multivitamin regularly. 

Rautiainen and colleagues mention in the journal American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, in industrialized countries is widespread use of multivitamins. While the conventional wisdom in these countries state that taking vitamins can help prevent heart disease. The researchers revealed that in fact there is little evidence to support that claim.
 
To determine the relationship between the use of vitamins and heart disease in women, Rautiainen and his team include 31 671 women without a history of heart disease and 2262 women who did have heart disease for 10 years. The women were aged between 49 to 83 years in the early days of research, and about 60 percent in each group using several types of the same dietary supplement. 

During the observed time period, 932 heart attacks occurred in the group of women with no history of heart disease, while 269 women with heart disease also had a heart attack. Among the women who initially did not have heart disease and do not take dietary supplements, 3.4 percent of them had a heart attack, compared with 2.6 percent of women who took multivitamins plus other supplements. 

This translates to the risk of heart attack about 27 percent lower for women who take vitamins. Meanwhile, among women with heart disease, 13 percent of which do not use the vitamins had a heart attack, compared with 14 percent of women who took multivitamins. This result is not significant differences (means could have been due to chance). 

For women without heart disease at the beginning of the study, taking a multivitamin is less than five years can reduce the risk of heart attack by 18 percent compared with non-users of supplements. While users of vitamins for 10 years or more will reduce the risk by 41 percent. 

Previously, other studies also produced similar findings that the consumption of vitamins prevent heart disease. Heart health, as you often hear, depending on the decrease in bad cholesterol (LDL) and increase good cholesterol (HDL). But now, the recommendations are not that simple. 

Recent findings indicate that cholesterol is part of a dual action. And vitamin tablets, according to the findings of this study, can be used as a new treatment for heart disease. The researchers found that LDL has a twin brother known as lipoprotein (a), which can increase the risk of heart disease. Having LDL and Lp (a) would double the risk and increase the risk of clogged arteries.