The positive impacts of Vitamin D supplements in helping diseased
hearts have been brought to the fore by a new study. The findings were
presented by the United Kingdom (UK) Leeds Teaching Hospitals team at a
meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
Most Vitamin D comes from sunlight, although it is also found in oily
fish, eggs and is added to some foods such as breakfast cereals.
Vitamin D manages calcium in the blood, bones and gut and helps cells
all over the body to communicate properly. Vitamin D mainly comes
from the skin when it is exposed to sunlight. After that, the body goes
through a number of chemical processes to change it so that the body can
use it.
In the study, a trial on 163 heart failure patients found supplements
of the vitamin, which is made in the skin when exposed to sunlight,
improved the hearts’ ability to pump blood around the body.
While the research team described the results as ‘stunning,’ the
British Heart Foundation called for longer trials to assess the pills.
Heart disease is an umbrella term for any type of disorder that affects
the heart. Heart disease means the same as cardiac disease, but not
cardiovascular disease. On its part, cardiovascular disease refers to
disorders of the blood vessels and heart, while heart disease refers to
just the heart. Vitamin D is vital for healthy bones and teeth and may
have important health benefits throughout the body, but many people are
deficient of it.
The average age of people in the study was 70 and like many people of
that age, they had low levels of vitamin D even in the summer.
“They do spend less time outside, but the skin’s ability to
manufacture Vitamin D also gets less effective (with age) and we don’t
really understand why that is,” said consultant cardiologist, Dr. Klaus
Witte. Patients were given either a 100 microgram Vitamin D tablet or a
sugar pill placebo each day for a year. And researchers measured the
impact on heart failure – a condition in which the heart becomes too
weak to pump blood properly. The key measure was the ejection fraction,
the amount of blood pumped out of the chambers of the heart with each
beat.
In a healthy adult, the figure is between 60 per cent and 70 per
cent, but only a quarter of the blood in the heart was being
successfully pumped out in the heart failure patients. But in those
taking the vitamin pills, the ejection fraction increased from 26 per
cent to 34 per cent. Dr. Witte said: “It’s quite a big deal that is as
big as you would expect from other more expensive treatments that we
use, it’s a stunning effect.
“It’s as cheap as chips, has no side effects and a stunning
improvement on people already on optimal medical therapy, it is the
first time anyone has shown something like this in the last 15 years.”
The study also showed the patients’ hearts became smaller – a suggestion
they are becoming more powerful and efficient.
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