In the past, I had reported on a study called the WAVE trial that found that anyone who joined in doing "the wave" at a football or hockey games was in desperate need of a life. Just kidding, although when you think about it, that's probably true.
No, what the WAVE (the Women's Angiographic Vitamin and Estrogen) trial really found is that postmenopausal women with preexisting heart disease who took hormone replacement therapy or vitamins C or E (the most widely promoted "antioxidant" vitamins for prevention of heart disease) in order to prevent further deterioration of their hearts got absolutely no benefit from those regimes.
In fact, quite the opposite in that women on vitamins actually suffered more heart "events" than did women on placebo.
So does that mean that all vitamins are useless in preventing heart disease? Not at all. In fact, there's mounting evidence that another vitamin, namely folic acid, may be very useful in preventing cardiovascular disease, although for some reason, folic acid does not seem to be given nearly as much attention as vitamins C and E.
Well, to me, that's just a plain shame, and it's something, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, up with which we should no longer put. So let me tell you about another study concerning the link between folic acid and a healthy heart.
In this report, which was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), researchers looked at over 100 other studies that involved folic acid (this kind of study that analyzes other studies is called a meta-analysis, just in case you were wondering), and they came to two conclusions.
First, they concluded that the higher your blood level of homocysteine (an amino acid formed by the breakdown of protein in your body) the higher your risk of heart attack, stroke, and blood clots in the leg - what's called deep vein thrombosis or DVT. DVT is a dangerous condition because if part of that clot breaks off and travels up the bloodstream, it can lead to a stroke or even sudden death. It's a DVT, for example, that causes the deaths that are attributed to "economy class syndrome" on airplanes, where people suffer strokes or die after being cramped in those economy class seats on planes.
So this study confirms that high homocysteine is bad for you.
But guess what, folks? The best way to lower homocysteine levels is to take lots of folic acid (and probably vitamins B12 and B6, too). In fact, this study in the BMJ estimated that reducing homocysteine levels in the general population by a pretty moderate amount through the more widespread use of folic acid could reduce the risk of heart attack by 16%, deep vein thrombosis by 25%, and stroke by 25%, which is a hell of a reduction in pretty bad events, if you ask me.
So should you run out and get yourself some folic acid even before reading to the end of this article? Of course not. First, a sudden burst of activity in a previously sedentary person can lead to a heart attack, so don't rush off for any reason, for heaven's sake, because you may not make it back.
More important, I firmly believe that you should always discuss any significant change in what you are about to start taking with your physician first because there may be reasons you can't make that particular change in your life. For example, anyone with a low vitamin B12 intake should be careful about how much folic acid they consume because high folic acid intake can mask low blood levels of vitamin B12, and lead to neurological damage and other problems.
That aside, it's my opinion that anyone who already has one or more risk factors for heart disease should consider taking more folic acid, which sadly, I'm afraid, includes all those of us in the (gulp!) latter halves of our midlives. How did it go by so quickly anyway?
