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SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah doctors have discovered a simple way to lower the risk of heart disease. Turns out, preventing and treating the disease in some patients is as easy as taking a supplement.
Researchers at the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center discovered patients who added vitamin D to their diet actually had a lower chance of having a heart attack.
Ten to 15 minutes of sunshine 3 times weekly is enough to produce the body's requirement of vitamin D.
Long thought to be the champion of strong bones, vitamin D has a new role.
"Now we're finding it's even more important in other areas: high blood pressure, heart disease," says Dr. Brent Muhlestein, director of the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center.
Doctors and researchers at the heart institute in Murray found a link between vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of heart problems.
"Can we fix that by supplementing our diet with pills to increase our vitamin d levels, or going out into the sun and getting more exposure," Muhlestein says.
- Dairy products
- Cheese
- Butter
- Cream
- Fortified milk (all milk in the U.S. is fortified with vitamin D)
- Fish
- Oysters
- Fortified cereals
- Margarine
Doctors put their theory to the test, studying thousands of patients. Participants increased the amount of vitamin D in their diet with a simple supplement.
"Supplements are cheap, they're inexpensive, over-the-counter, and you can purchase them at almost any store," Muhlestein says. "We found that, indeed, the patients that started out with low vitamin D levels, if they went to the effort to increase their levels to a normal range, they had a lower chance of developing a heart attack or a stroke or dying."
Doctors say increasing sun exposure may also help, but they also warn too much sun can increase the risk for skin cancer.
"That's why, one of the reasons, I think we have a lot more people with low vitamin D levels than we used to have, is because we're protecting ourselves against skin cancer, which is a good thing," Muhlestein says.
Doctors say in order to benefit both from supplements and sun exposure, use sunscreen while outside. They also recommend people have their vitamin D levels tested before starting any supplement regime.
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