While the onslaught against vitamin D in mainstream medicine and the blogosphere continues unabated, every once in a while we get studies like the one below that give some hope that not everything is lost. A meager daily dose of 5,000 IU vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) reduced second heart attack risk by 50%+. This is something no prescription pharma drug is known to be able to do, and is on par with aspirin’s effectiveness in preventing said secondary heart attacks. Hhhm, I wonder what would happen is one combined aspirin and vitamin D3? Nah, not really, I am not wondering as it is pretty obvious it would be beneficial and other studies have already explored the synergistic effects of combining aspirin with vitamin D. Btw, I recently became aware that the vitamin D receptor (VDR) is part of the thyroid hormone receptor subfamily. As such, T3 and vitamin D can activate each others’ receptors, which means vitamin D is a true thyromimetic. That fact that heart disease is known to be reliably inducible in animals by removing the thyroid gland, and that people taking thyroid have lower risk of heart disease than the general population strongly suggests that the protective effects of vitamin D3 seen in this study are metabolic in origin, by mimicking the effects of T3.
“…A new study from researchers with Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City examined the effect of vitamin D3 supplementation on people who previously had heart attacks. The researchers did not give everyone the same vitamin D3 dosage but instead adjusted the amount based on the needs of each participant. The researchers found that vitamin D3 may drastically reduced the risk of having a second heart attack.”
“…The researchers randomly selected the control group and who would receive the targeted vitamin D3 treatment. At the time of enrollment, 87% of participants had low vitamin D levels. The target level was 40 nanograms/milliliter (ng/ml), and the average vitamin D level was 27 ng/ml. The researchers administered a high vitamin D3 starting dose of 5,000 UI to nearly 60% of participants. The researchers monitored vitamin D3 levels throughout the trial to make sure they remained at the target level. If someone’s vitamin D level dropped below that, they received vitamin D supplementation to get back on track.”
“…The rate of follow-up heart attacks was 3.8% in the test group compared to 7.9% in the control group. Overall, while the results suggest that targeted vitamin D3 supplementation may not reduce all major cardiac outcomes, it did cut the risk of repeat heart attacks by more than half. The research team plans to conduct a larger clinical trial to confirm these findings.”
