VITAMINS DO NOT PREVENT HEART ATTACKS

1294

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Doctors at Harvard Medical school report that people who take vitamin supplements do not have a reduced incidence of heart attacks or death from heart attacks.

The Doctors Study involves following 83,639 physicians and comparing their habits with diseases they acquire as they age. Vitamin pills have not protected the participants from heart attacks, but lack of any one of three vitamin: folic acid, pyridoxine, or vitamin B12, can raise blood levels of homocysteine and cause heart attacks.

Your body does not care how you get these three vitamins. The most likely explanation why vitamin pills do not prevent heart attacks is that the doctors met their needs for these vitamins from their diets. The data shows that lack of any one of three vitamins causes heart attacks, it does not show that taking more vitamins than your body requires prevents heart attacks.

Vitamin supplement use in a low-risk population of US male physicians and subsequent cardiovascular mortality. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2002, Vol 162, Iss 13, pp 1472-1476. J Muntwyler, CH Hennekens, JE Manson, JE Buring, JM Gaziano. Gaziano JM, Brigham & Womens Hosp, Dept Med, Div Prevent Med, 900 Commonwealth Ave E, Boston,MA 02215 USA

Checked 9/3/05