VITAMINS NOT A PREVENTION FOR HEART ATTACK
Multivitamins and minerals have no benefit in preventing heart attacks, strokes or cardiovascular disease, an analysis of more than two million participants has found.
A multibillion dollar industry, the supplements are often marketed with a wide array of health-promoting claims.
But researchers from the University of Alabama, who followed more than two million people from 18 trials of nutritional supplements, saw no evidence they could lower heart disease deaths.
“It has been exceptionally difficult to convince people, including nutritional researchers, to acknowledge that multivitamin and mineral supplements don’t prevent cardiovascular diseases,” said the study’s lead author Dr Joonseok Kim, an assistant professor of cardiology in the department of medicine at the University of Alabama.
“I hope our study findings help decrease the hype around multivitamin and mineral supplements and encourage people to use proven methods to reduce their risk of cardiovascular diseases – such as eating more fruit and vegetables, exercising and avoiding tobacco.”
The nutritional supplement industry will be worth more than £200bn globally by 2024, Dr Kim writes in the study published in the American Heart Association (AHA) journal Circulation.
But these products in countries like the UK and US do not require approval on safety or effectiveness grounds.
A multibillion dollar industry, the supplements are often marketed with a wide array of health-promoting claims.
But researchers from the University of Alabama, who followed more than two million people from 18 trials of nutritional supplements, saw no evidence they could lower heart disease deaths.
“It has been exceptionally difficult to convince people, including nutritional researchers, to acknowledge that multivitamin and mineral supplements don’t prevent cardiovascular diseases,” said the study’s lead author Dr Joonseok Kim, an assistant professor of cardiology in the department of medicine at the University of Alabama.
“I hope our study findings help decrease the hype around multivitamin and mineral supplements and encourage people to use proven methods to reduce their risk of cardiovascular diseases – such as eating more fruit and vegetables, exercising and avoiding tobacco.”
The nutritional supplement industry will be worth more than £200bn globally by 2024, Dr Kim writes in the study published in the American Heart Association (AHA) journal Circulation.
But these products in countries like the UK and US do not require approval on safety or effectiveness grounds.