In case of emergency
Folic acid prevents damage caused by heart attacks
One of the running jokes in the office is that the FDA’s nutrient “enrichment” programs are just like federal tax returns: They take away a lot, waste most of it, give you back a tiny bit, and you’re supposed to be happy about it. And just like tax refunds, we’d all be better off with more — a whole lot more in the case of folic acid.
Dr. Wright has written about this essential nutrient in Nutrition & Healing many times over the years, and we’ve covered it frequently here in the eTips as well. Even the mainstream health media has grudgingly come around and recently featured stories on folate’s ability to prevent both premature births and dementia. And a new study published last month in the medical journal Circulation sticks yet another impressive feather in the vitamin’s cap.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore found that folic acid supplementation can act as a buffer against the often serious damage that occurs during a heart attack. The research team gave rats 10 milligrams of folic acid for a week prior to inducing heart attacks in both the folate-treated group and in an untreated group. They discovered that the heart function in the folate group actually remained quite strong during the 30-minute window during which they restricted blood flow to simulate heart attacks: The hearts of the folate-treated rats continued to pump at almost a normal rate, unlike the untreated rats, whose heart-pumping action plummeted to 27 percent. Blood flow and blood pressure were also much better — practically stable — during the heart attacks in the folate group, while they fell dramatically (by 25 and 40 percent, respectively) in the untreated animals.
And these stabilizing effects helped decrease two of the biggest post-heart-attack complications, fatal arrhythmias and build-up of dangerous chemicals known as reactive oxygen species (ROS). The folate-treated rats experienced half of the ROS buildup of the untreated animals, and 28 percent fewer incidents of fatal arrhythmia.
I know that all of this might seem “too little, too late” — and it’s true that your primary objective should be to prevent heart attacks from happening in the first place. But judging from the significant heart stabilizing and strengthening effects the large doses of folic acid in the study had after just one week, imagine the sort of shield you could build with smaller doses, taken on a daily basis over the course of many years. And teaming those smaller daily doses of folic acid up with vitamins B6 and B12 is a heart-health tactic natural medicine practitioners, Dr. Wright included, have been recommending for years.
So, if you’re already following this advice, chances are good you may never need to take advantage of folic acid as part of a heart-attack emergency repair kit. But it’s always a good idea to know what to put in that kit — just in case.
Source:
“Brief, high doses of folate — B vitamin — blunt damage from heart attack,” ScienceDaily (www.sciencedaily.com), 3/28/08
