Monday, November 10, 2008

Vitamin pills don't prevent heart disease.

Vitamins C and E — pills taken by millions of Americans — do nothing to prevent heart disease in men, one of the largest and longest studies of these supplements has found. Results also were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

As for vitamin C, some research suggests it may aid cancer, not fight it. A previous study in women at high risk of heart problems found it did not prevent heart attacks.

It involved 14,641 male doctors, 50 or older, including 5 percent who had heart disease at the time the study started in 1997. They were put into four groups and given either vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or dummy pills. The dose of E was 400 international units every other day; C was 500 milligrams daily.

After an average of eight years, no difference was seen in the rates of heart attack, stroke or heart-related deaths among the groups.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and several vitamin makers.

Bonnie - I am absolutely dumbfounded by the structure of these studies. As in the other vitamin E study, the vitamins used were synthetic, which most experts believe are useless. In the case of vitamin E, the researchers only used alpha tocopherol, not mixed. Most experts know mixed tocopherols are crucial for effectiveness.

The "vitamin makers" were Wyeth, a drug company, and BASF, a chemical company, who dispenses raw materials for supplements, many of them synthetic.

I'm sure this will grab headlines, but we will keep looking at the fine print for our clients.

P.S. One AMA doctor was quoted on this topic calling on everyone to go to the "Quackwatch" website to read about supplements. Besides the fact that the website was cited by the Federal Trade Commission for slander and false claims, the AMA doctor is going against his organization's suggestion, which promotes the daily use of a multivitamin/mineral.

1 comment:

Brate said...

An excellent research!! This would really help heart patients and stroke patients to recover at the time of emergency. As many people are dying only because of heart and stroke attacks, some noteworthy steps like this creating a pill to thwart heart attacks and strokes might be a boon for them who are on the verge of facing a heart attack. But sometimes people fail to understand and recognize the indications of pre-heart attack symptoms. Sometimes, a little knowledge regarding the immediate actions to be taken may help your near and dear ones to survive in such incidents. The response a person takes to treat a victim decides the probability of his/her survival. It’s been my personal experience fighting to survive against a heart attack. Because of having many heart problems, I was enrolled in a concierge Healthcare program from elite health. I was attacked by a severe heart attack in a party, luckily surrounded by many people. Some of the sudden changes in my body was recognized by me and anticipated immediately. I got a very severe chest pain which was almost unbearable for more than a minute. I got the suspicion that I might be having heart attack, and immediately called my physician on the phone, and explained my condition and its severity. Because of the immediate guidance, I was directed immediately to have an aspirin which I used to carry with me as prescribed by my physician. It was quite a frightening experience for me to face such a heart attack, but somehow I managed to be calm until 911 arrived. I was immediately taken to the nearest hospital, where already my physician were present and have got everything setup according to my medical history. And it was in some matter of seconds that everything was in control. A doctor, who already have the complete knowledge of the medical history and fitness of the person, extra ordinarily ameliorate your recovery process. Hence such a concierge level program from Elite health, helped me a save my life, like many others.