Omega-3 fish oils reduce heart disease, vitamin D and fish oils do not seem to affect cancer.

At the recent American Heart Association and Congress of Cardiology, two very important studies were presented. The first (VITAL) trial followed 26,000 people over five years, some had vitamin D, some had fish oils (1 g daily), some have both and some have none. They looked at the incidence of cancer, and also cardiovascular events which they described as heart attacks, strokes and heart deaths. The conclusion was that there was no significant benefit from either vitamin D or fish oils, however, when they looked at just heart disease (and removed stroke) there was a 30% reduction in heart attack and heart deaths. (Because this was not prespecified, and was called a subgroup analysis, people are saying this is a negative trial!)

At the same meeting, the REDUCIT trial was published, with 3 g of fish oils taken daily, and in the study there was a 25% reduction in heart attack, cardiac events and death. This was incredibly significant (p<00000005), even more so because many of these people were already on full medical management including statin drugs.

It is amazing how the profession does its best to ignore complementary treatments, but I don't think there is any doubt now that omega-3 fish oils, provided it is quality oil (mercury free and pure) and taken an adequate doses does make an enormous difference to people with heart disease, or more importantly people at risk of heart disease. It is such an easy and innocuous preventive treatment, particularly when compared with most of the drugs we have available.
I believe that everybody at risk of heart disease or with disease should be taking 3 g of omega-3 fish oils per day.

These headlines are NOT TRUE - 

Always read the small print in supplement trials!

The results of 2 recent trials have caused international headlines – claiming multivitamins do not work nor does vitamin D.
This information actually comes from 2 studies which are far from conclusive.

Multivitamins and heart disease – this is a huge study (in part funded by Pfizer) looking at doctors in the United States aged 50 years and over. 13,316 doctors were either given multivitamins (Centrum Silver) or dummy tablets and followed for 13 years. Their conclusions was slightly strange – "there was no consistent evidence of various foods, nutrients, dietary patterns or multivitamins on cardiovascular disease in points. However there were statistically significant interactions between multivitamins and B6 and heart attacks, multivitamins and vitamin D on cardiovascular mortality, and multivitamins and B12 on cardiovascular and total mortality." Then commented however that these patterns were inconsistent, and thus ignore them. They also concluded that future studies are needed.
This is not the message that the public have received.

Questions that could be asked:
1. Doctors on the whole eat well if not perfectly, and are probably the least likely populations needing multivitamins.
2. Is Centrum the best multivitamin to recommend?
3. They did show benefits on heart attacks, heart and total deaths, why did they chose to ignore them?

The 2nd study is equally puzzling, it comes from a New Zealand group studied the benefits of vitamin D and heart disease. Just over 5000 people were in this general practice study, half received monthly vitamin D 100,000iu and the other half dummy tablets for 3 years. This appeared to have no effect on cardiovascular disease. They concluded "this result does not support the use of monthly vitamin D supplements, the effects of daily or weekly supplementation requires further study."
Again this is not the message that has been publicised.
Questions that could be asked:
1. Is 3 years ready long enough to have an effect?
2. The quality of general practitioner studies is often patchy.
3. Were we ever designed to receive 100,000 international units of vitamin D monthly? This equates to 71 tablespoons of cod liver oil or 19 L of milk drunk on the 1st of the month, and then none for 30 days!

Once again the publicity against supplements shows very biased reporting.

Vitamin D helps treat heart failure

Vitamin D improves heart function in people with chronic heart failure.

Heart failure is an extremely serious condition, causing unpleasant symptoms of breathlessness tiredness weakness and swelling, but also has a very significant mortality. Medical treatment consists of drugs (ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and diuretics) but these have limited effectiveness in some patients, and complimentary therapies such as coenzyme Q 10 l-carnitine and D ribose have also been suggested.

A recent study performed in Leeds hospital (the Vindicate trial) offers hope from an unexpected source, namely vitamin D.
In the study 160 patients on full medical treatment were either given vitamin D or dummy tablets for one year.  At the end of the year those taking the dummy tablets had no benefit on heart function as measured by a cardiac ultrasound scan, but in the 80 patients who took vitamin D 3 the heart function improved from 26 to 34%.

This is a very major improvement in heart function, probably greater than that achieved by any of the modern medical drugs. One wonders why this has not been trumpeted around the world, possibly because it is a supplement and not a drug. Considering there are more than 900,000 people in the United Kingdom, and over 23 million worldwide suffering from heart failure, this therapy could be an extremely cheap and efficient way of helping many people.

It was presented at the American College of cardiology, 65th annual scientific sessions in Chicago in April.

Anybody suffering from heart failure should undoubtedly be taking additional

Calcium supplements are safe

Calcium supplements do not increase the risk of heart disease.

Until recently the only side-effect of calcium supplementation was a very small increase in kidney stones, but in recent years there has been a suggestion from a small number of researchers that calcium supplementation may increase the risk of heart attacks.

Because calcium and vitamin D are extremely important in bone health and many other bodily functions, people have been encouraged to stop taking supplements and rely on their diet for calcium. In most cases this is usually insufficient, particularly in the elderly.

A study recently presented at the world Congress of Osteoporosis and Musculoskeletal medicine, (April 2016) the authors reviewed the effect of both calcium and vitamin D supplements in over 500,000 people over 7 years in the United Kingdom. This showed no effect of calcium supplements or vitamin D on the incidence of heart disease in either men or women.

The UK Biobank is a large study of men and women (502,664) with a mean age of 58 years, they recorded the baseline intake of calcium and vitamin D supplements and link this to hospital admissions for any cardiovascular event and death through the 7 years of follow-up. 34,890 participants were taking calcium supplements and 20,004 vitamin D. The incidence of heart disease and death were no different from those people taking no supplements.

Hopefully, this will put to bed any suggestion that taking these supplements which are essential particularly as we age does anything other than good. Osteoporosis and falls (particularly hip fractures) are a major cause of both morbidity and death in the older population, and these people can now confidently take the supplements knowing it will do them no harm.

Low vitamin D levels doubles size of a stroke

Low levels of Vitamin D double the size of a stroke.

In a paper presented at the International Stroke Conference 2015,  studied 96 patients after strokes – those with low vitamin D levels (<30ng/ml) had MRI evidence of brain damage TWICE that of those with higher Vitamin D levels (17 vs 8 mls).  The ‘poor 90 day outcome score’ was also doubled in those with low vitamin D levels.

Neurologists are seriously looking at checking vitamin D levels, but this is really after the horse has bolted.   Other studies which have shown low vitamin D levels increase cardiovascular risk, double the risk of having a stroke, increase risk of hip fracture post stroke – it does seem logical to maintain adequate vitamin D levels, and the only guaranteed way to achieve this is with supplementation.  

As you will see with this and subsequent posts, there are many good scientific and proven reasons why in today’s world we need to supplement our diet to enable our bodies to function the way they were designed to.   Until, we start doing this, from childhood all through life, then the disastrous direction that health is going, will continue unabated.