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.
In the UK, people over 65 are advised to take 10 microgram supplements of the vitamin.
