Heart smart - updates - heart disease prevention through vitamin D - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Better Nutrition, August, 2002

According to an April 2002 report by the American Heart Association, women over age 65 who take vitamin D have one-third less risk of dying from heart disease.

Researchers studied 9,704 women ages 65 and older for an average of 11 years. During that time, 420 of the women died of heart disease. Participants who took vitamin D supplements had 31 percent less risk of death from heart disease than those who didn't. "Studying how vitamin D affects heart disease is a worthy area of investigation, but this is only a first step. More work is needed before I could advocate the use of vitamin D to treat or prevent heart disease," says Paul D. Varosy, MD, of the University of California at San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center.