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Vitamins May Lower Risk Of Heart Disease, Says Study

A recent study revealed that people who consume vitamin E and multivitamin supplements daily for a period of 10 years are likely to lower the risk of death due to dangerous heart disease. Speaking about this Dr. Gaia Pocobelli and his colleagues in Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, Washington, wrote in their note that people who take vitamin C and vitamin E supplements seem to lower the risk of dying in a span of 5 year period while people who took vitamin C may also enjoy lower risk of demise from deadly cancer.

It is a known fact that vitamin C and E are good antioxidants that are normally thought to protect our body cells fighting against the harmful radicals. However, how the use of these vitamins in lower the risk of death is still an unsolved puzzle for the scientists. The authors also added in the report in American Journal of Epidemiology that the finding of this study clearly backup earlier studies. They stated that in many cases the decreased risks are relatively small and is mostly related to the healthy behaviors and habits of the people who take these vitamin supplements.

The research team surveyed around 77, 719 women and men in Washington. All these people where between the age of 50 and 76. 67% of the people in the group had ever taken multivitamins, 47% had ever had vitamin C and 48 % had ever had vitamin E. The survey was carried on for a period of 5 years, during this period there were around 3,577 deaths. In the group who had never used vitamin supplements, 350 people died from heart diseases while there were around 519 death cases amongst the other group that used vitamins. After a bit of adjustments made for age and gender, diet, lifestyle and medical conditions the researchers saw a slight decrease in the death risks from deadly heart diseases among the people who used multivitamins frequently.

Drilling down the vitamin usage the researchers found that people who took more than 322mg of vitamin C per day seemed to decrease the risk of death due to cancer and the other diseases within the monitored 5 year period in comparison with the non-vitamin users. The study also revealed that even people with history of heart diseases seemed to reduce the risk of deaths when they took this level of vitamin C. In the case of vitamin E supplements, men and women who took more than 215mg of vitamin E per day had decreased slightly in heart related and overall risk for death compare to non-vitamin users. The researchers saw no clear association with the intake of vitamin E and cancer death risk.

Though the report has taken the lifestyle of people into account, the authors feel that the findings or the results should be interpreted carefully because the health behaviors of people may differ. The authors added that some of the health behaviors might not have been accounted and they may tend to be common in vitamin supplement users than in people who do not use it.