|
Harvard Heart Letter | April 2008
Heart Beat
Golden opportunity to fight heart disease
It might be time to add too little vitamin D to the list of things that promote heart disease.
Sometimes
called the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D usually draws attention for its
role in building bone. But it does so much more than that. Vitamin D
helps calm the immune system. It may fight colon, breast, prostate, and
other cancers. It is involved in controlling blood pressure and blood
sugar. And studies have linked too little vitamin D with peripheral
artery disease, heart failure, and deaths from heart disease.
A
report from the Framingham Heart Study bolsters the notion that vitamin
D is good for the heart. Among more than 1,700 middle-aged men and
women, all initially free of cardiovascular disease, those with low
vitamin D levels were more likely than those with “normal” vitamin D
levels to have had a heart attack or stroke or to have developed
angina, heart failure, or some other cardiovascular condition over an
eight-year period. This was especially true for folks with low vitamin
D and high blood pressure.
How much vitamin D do you need?
The Framingham study can’t answer that question. Current guidelines
call for 400 international units (IU) a day for people between the ages
of 51 and 70 and 600 IU a day after that. A growing number of experts
say this is too low, and recommend aiming for 800 to 1,000 IU a day.
The easiest way to get more vitamin D is to spend five to 10 minutes a
day outside without sunscreen, letting the skin of your face and arms
soak up sunlight. (This doesn’t work in the winter if you live north of
a line connecting San Francisco and Philadelphia.) A daily multivitamin
plus a vitamin D pill or a calcium supplement with added vitamin D can
also do the trick.
|
