FROM: HHS HealthBeat (June 22, 2012)
Women's hearts and vitamin E
Vitamin E may not be the way to prevent heart failure. Researchers looked at about 10 years of data on nearly 40,000 women who had healthy hearts at the start, to see if the antioxidant would live up to its billing about removing potentially damaging forms of oxygen. At Massachusetts General Hospital, researcher Claudia Chae:
“Antioxidant therapy with vitamin E at a dose of 600 international units every other day did not reduce the overall risk of incident heart failure in initially healthy women.”
In heart failure, the heart can’t pump enough blood to the rest of the body. Being physically active, controlling your weight and not smoking can help to prevent it.
The study in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
