Vitamin D Defends Heart against Attacks

It is important to have sufficient levels of vitamin D in the body as low levels of this sunshine vitamin can increase your risk of having a heart attack. These are the findings of a new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

When our skin is exposed to sunlight, the body starts producing vitamin D – the reason why it is called the sunshine vitamin. Milk is another great source of vitamin D, as are fatty fish such as salmon. Vitamin D is extremely important for bone health as it helps our body absorb calcium. If children have deficiency of this vitamin, it can lead to weak bone development and rickets; in adults, it can cause osteoporosis.

There have been several studies recently that have highlighted the many health benefits of vitamin D including the protection it provides against various types of cancer such as colon and breast cancer, periphery artery disease and tuberculosis.

The new study by Dr. Edward Giovannucci and colleagues covered 454 health professionals between the ages of 40 and 75, all of whom had had a nonfatal heart attack or succumbed to heart disease. Another 900 men without any history of heart trouble were also covered as controls. The researchers gathered blood samples from all subjects to measure their vitamin D levels and then followed them for a period of 10 years.

When the researchers compared men who had vitamin D deficiency – levels no more than 15 nanograms per millilitre of blood to those men who fell in the lower end of the normal range of at least 30 nanograms per millilitre of blood, they found that the former had 2.5 times higher the risk of having a heart attack compared to the latter.

“Those with low vitamin D, on top of just being at higher risk for heart attack in general, were at particularly high risk to have a fatal heart attack,” Dr. Giovannucci said. The findings are in line with another study conducted at Harvard Medical School in January that found that people with low levels of vitamin D are at higher risk of heart attack, heart failure and stroke.

Based on the combined evidence provided by the two studies, Dr. Giovannucci urged people to understand the value of vitamin D and maintain normal levels. He advised people to get their doctor to administer a blood test for checking their vitamin D levels. In his opinion, people with low levels of vitamin D should start taking supplements to boost the same.

“Many people have low vitamin levels,” Dr. Giovannucci said. “Traditionally, physicians have only been concerned about the bone effects. But perhaps having these chronically low levels of vitamin D may be having these subtle physiological changes in a lot of tissues,” he added.

Elaborating on their study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and the process through which vitamin D protects the heart, Dr. Giovannucci said that there could be multiple ways. According to him, it might lower blood pressure, regulate inflammation, reduce calcification of coronary arteries, affect the heart muscle or reduce respiratory infections in winter.

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