Multi-Vitamins Slash Heart Attack Risk by 41%

(Article first published as Multi-Vitamin Use Shown to Dramatically Lower Heart Attack Risk on Technorati.)

Your mother was right when she told you to eat your vegetables and take your vitamins. It just sounds like good advice, yet millions of people fail to eat the minimum servings of fresh vegetables and fruit and don’t supplement their poor diet with the essential vitamins and minerals needed to prevent chronic illness.

Our body has many survival mechanisms that provide for short term nutritional shortfalls. After a period of years and decades the lack of vitamins and minerals cause our body to age and set the stage for heart disease, diabetes, dementia and cancer. Fortunately there are important steps we can take to fight cellular aging and dramatically lower disease risk.

We Need a Continual Supply of Nutrients to Promote Health

The heart is a very metabolically active organ that requires a constant supply of energy and nutrients to function optimally. Vitamin C is critical to the structural integrity of arteries that supply blood to the heart and magnesium helps maintain electrical activity and lower blood pressure so the muscle can beat efficiently. When we are deficient in these nutrients over time, heart function begins to decline and risk of a heart attack increase quickly.

Daily Multi Vitamin Use Shown to Slash Heart Attack Risk

The results of a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition provide evidence that taking a multi vitamin can have a critical impact on heart disease risk. Women who took a high potency multi vitamin over a 5 year period were found to lower their risk of a heart attack by 41% compared to women who didn’t supplement. These results demonstrate the importance of proper nutrition to our health.

It’s important to note that the study participants were all in good health at the beginning of the study, indicating that multi vitamins are effective in maintaining health status. People with existing health concerns need to be much more vigilant about their nutrition and would want to follow a more potent and targeted supplemental regimen.

Nutrients Best Supplied by Natural Diet

The results of this study highlight the importance of vitamins and minerals to our health. A potent multi vitamin is a good way to ensure you get the minimum requirements for the vitamins and minerals that are commonly available in a single tablet. Nature provides a bounty of additional nutrients in whole foods that simply aren’t available in a pill. Many of the nutrients that exist in natural foods have yet to be discovered and undoubtedly have a major impact on our health when eaten as part of a whole food diet.

To ensure you benefit from the full matrix of nutrients, eat a diet with plenty of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Cut the processed foods, sugar and hydrogenated fats that are known to promote disease. Find a multi vitamin that is made from organic whole foods for maximum health benefit, and stay away from synthetic varieties that are full of chemicals and toxins. Take control of your health with a natural diet of whole foods and supplement daily with a quality whole food based multi vitamin.