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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Will Vitamins Prevent Heart Disease? Vitamins are a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States. Every year, Americans spend an estimated $11.8 billion on vitamin and mineral supplements, which are commonly used to promote health and prevent chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Nearly half of the American adults take at least one vitamin or mineral supplement regularly, including 32 percent of them who take multi-vitamins and or multi-minerals. Cardiovascular disease (includes heart disease and stroke) and cancer are the 2 leading killers of Americans. Both the diseases have a few shared risk factors, including inflammation, oxidative stress, and methionine metabolism. Many in vitro and animal studies suggested that oxidative stress contributes to diseases like cancer and heart disease. Hence, there is reason to believe that antioxidants, including beta-carotene, selenium, and vitamins A, C and E, could be useful as preventive medicines. But the question is: will these supplements offer us healthier lives and help prolong our lives? According to researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, there has not much evidence to show that vitamins could prevent heart disease or cancer. Their findings, which appeared on 17 December 2013 in the ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’, were used by The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) as the basis to update recommendations. After reviewing more than 25 studies that examined the benefits and harms of using vitamin and mineral supplements for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, cancer, or all-cause mortality in healthy individuals without known nutritional deficiencies, they found no evidence of beneficial effects on cardiovascular disease, cancer, or all-cause mortality.
Though the findings were not clear-cut, there were 2 clear exceptions in their report. Beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, can raise the risk of lung cancer in smokers, and vitamin E is not good in preventing cancer or heart disease. The report also indicated that vitamins could help pregnant women ensure they have healthy babies. Among health professional, some advocates that multi-vitamin could provide people those missing nutrients that are absent from poor diet or busy travel schedules while others think that consumers just try to fool themselves that vitamins can offset poor lifestyle choices. Some experts also caution the dangers of overtaking vitamins. Vitamin A, for example, can cause liver damage if taken in high doses. In fact, there is evidence that taking too many vitamins may be harmful. A study found that too much vitamin E might raise the risk of prostate cancer while the other study of 40,000 women found a slightly higher risk of death in women who took supplements. Does this mean that people do not need the nutrients? Of course not! Instead of getting from a multi-vitamin, people should get all the essential nutrients from a healthy balanced diet. Evident clearly showed that fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy products and seafood might be important in the prevention of cancer or cardiovascular disease. The American Heart Association (AHA) also recommends that healthy people should get adequate nutrients via a variety of foods instead of taking supplements. On February 25, 2014, USPSTF published its final decision on vitamin supplements in the ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’. They confirmed that there is a lack of evidence to support the claims that multi-vitamins, individual vitamins and minerals, and specifically beta-carotene and vitamin E could reduce the risk of heart disease or cancer in people with no nutritional deficiencies. USPSTF, therefore, recommended healthy adults aged 50 and above without any special nutritional needs not to take any multi-vitamin. However, the advice does not apply to children, women who are pregnant or may become pregnant, people with chronic illnesses, or people who have to take supplements because they cannot get all their essential nutrients from their diet. Nevertheless, members of the task force did admit that there are just not many randomized, controlled clinical trials that assess vitamins and multi-vitamins in groups of people that represent American adults as a whole.
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