{"id":152461,"date":"2025-11-25T18:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/152461\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T18:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:09:10","slug":"vitamin-d-supplement-can-affect-your-chances-for-a-heart-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/152461\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitamin D Supplement can Affect Your Chances for a Heart Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

VITAMIN D IS important. It builds strong bones and helps your immune system<\/a> do its job. You may have also heard that vitamin D is good for your heart, except scientists are still researching how much you need.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why a clinical trial presented earlier this month at the American Heart Association\u2019s Scientific Sessions 2025 made headlines. The results<\/a> showed people who took vitamin D halved their risk for a second heart attack. According to the authors, this trial differed from other vitamin D studies because they didn\u2019t give a standard vitamin D supplement. Instead, they tailored dosages to each individuals\u2019 needs to reach \u2018optimal\u2019 vitamin D levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrevious clinical trial research on vitamin D tested the potential impact of the same vitamin D dose for all participants without checking their blood levels first,\u201d explains Heidi T. May, PhD<\/a>, epidemiologist at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City and lead study author. \u201cWe took a different approach. We checked each participant’s vitamin D levels at enrollment and throughout the study, and we adjusted their dose as needed to bring and maintain them in a range of 40-80 ng\/mL.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does this mean for you? Will dusting off the vitamin D gummies in the back of your kitchen cabinet have similar effects? We turned to a cardiologist to explain the results.<\/p>\n

Does Low Vitamin D Levels Even Raise Heart Attack Risk?<\/p>\n

The Target-D clinical trial recruited 630 adults with heart disease from April 2017 to May 2023 About 78 percent of participants were men with an average age of 63. Nearly half had a previous heart attack and 85 percent of participants had low vitamin D levels (less than 40 ng\/mL).<\/p>\n

Dr. Deepak Talreja<\/a>, clinical chief of cardiology at Sentara Cardiology Specialists, part of Sentara Health, says people with very low vitamin D levels tend to show higher rates of coronary heart disease<\/a>, high blood pressure, and diabetes. However, \u201cwe do not know whether low vitamin D is a cause of heart disease or just a marker of poor overall health.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cOne way I like to put it to my patients is that low vitamin D levels and heart disease often travel together, but one does not necessarily cause the other,\u201d he explains. Talreja adds that supplements could help with boosting heart health\u2014but mainly for people with a vitamin D deficiency.<\/p>\n

Can Keeping Vitamin D Levels Up Prevent Heart Attack?<\/p>\n

This is the research question May and her team set out to investigate in the recent clinical trial. Unlike other supplement trials, their team personalized each vitamin D dose to reach a healthy level. (There is no general consensus on what\u2019s an optimal level of vitamin D. The National Institutes of Health<\/a> states it\u2019s 20 ng\/mL and above while recent research<\/a> gives a range of 40 to 60 ng\/mL.) For this trial, the tailored doses were based on each participants\u2019 blood test results. <\/p>\n

People were randomly placed in two groups. The first group received personalized vitamin D supplements with doses adjusted every 3 months until their vitamin D blood levels were above 40 ng\/mL. Afterwards, their vitamin D blood levels were checked yearly with doses adjusted if vitamin D levels went below 40 ng\/mL or above 80 ng\/mL (vitamin D toxicity). The control group received the usual standard of care for heart attack prevention<\/a>. They did not receive any management for their vitamin D levels.<\/p>\n

People with tailored doses and who maintained vitamin D levels of over 40 ng\/mL for nearly four years had a 52 percent lower risk of heart attack compared to the control group. In total, there were 107 cardiac events, including heart attack, heart failure, stroke, or death. These events occurred in 15.7 percent of the vitamin D group and 18.4 percent of the control group.<\/p>\n

How can Vitamin D Help With Heart Health?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s multiple ways vitamin D indirectly helps with heart health, says Talreja. But he stresses all of this is based on correlations and observational studies. There is currently no scientific evidence that low vitamin D causes heart problems. Instead other factors may be at play.<\/p>\n

First, people who are physically active<\/a> may have less heart problems because they’re fit and just have more high vitamin D if they’re exercising on sunny days. Second, people may be eating foods like fatty fish that are nutrient dense. While it has high vitamin D levels, fatty fish also contain other nutrients such as omega-3s<\/a> that can improve heart health.<\/p>\n

The one direct way Talreja says vitamin D might help the heart is by lowering inflammation. Chronic inflammation is often linked with heart injuries<\/a> because it can cause swelling or pain<\/a> to multiple areas. This includes the lining of the heart, the heart muscles, or tissue around the heart. And there has been some research in people who are vitamin D deficient showing the supplement protects heart muscle cells<\/a> by calming down inflammation.<\/p>\n

Will Taking a Daily Vitamin D Supplement Protect Your Heart?<\/p>\n

It depends\u2014are you vitamin D deficient? The common theme in past studies and the recent trial is that vitamin D could help if you\u2019re running really low on it. <\/p>\n

\u201cSupplements<\/a> do matter for someone who is vitamin D deficient (typically <20 ng\/mL),\u201d Talreja explains. \u201cPeople who have risk factors such as osteoporosis or malabsorption, or people who have darker skin but are living in northern climates or who have limited sun exposure should consider a vitamin D supplement.\u201d<\/p>\n

When looking at the recent clinical trial results, Talreja finds the findings \u201cinteresting.\u201d However, it\u2019s still not enough to say that taking vitamin D will be the solution for preventing heart attacks. That\u2019s because he says the researchers did not control for other factors that could improve heart health. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who take vitamin D might have other behaviors that are healthier than people who don\u2019t, such as better diet, better medical care or follow-up or better adherence to other elements of their cardiac treatment, which are factors the study doesn\u2019t account for,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

You also need to think about dosage. The clinical trial tailored each vitamin D dose to have people reach healthy vitamin D levels. But since most came in vitamin D-deficient, they needed a huge quantity. Nearly 52 percent of participants needed more than 5,000 IU of vitamin daily to reach a target blood level greater than 40 ng\/mL. This is more than six times the recommended amount of 800 IU<\/a>. Talreja says taking too much Vitamin D (higher than 2,000 IU) is toxic and, in some cases, may cause kidney damage. <\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re not vitamin D deficient, will taking a vitamin D supplement help? There was a huge clinical trial called VITAL<\/a> that enrolled over 25,000 people to answer this question. And the answer was a resounding \u2026 no. In a general population with normal or mildly low vitamin D levels, taking vitamin D supplements did not reduce heart attacks, strokes, or heart-related deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me and my patients, proven tools for preventing a second heart attack include medications like aspirin, statins<\/a>, beta blockers and lifestyle changes such as better diet, not smoking and exercise,\u201d Talreja advises. \u201cI don\u2019t recommend vitamin D as standard therapy right now because the evidence isn\u2019t strong enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jocelyn Solis-Moreira, MS is the associate health & fitness for Men’s Health and has previously written for CNN, Scientific American, Popular Science, and National Geographic before joining the brand. When she’s not working, she’s doing circus arts or working towards the perfect pull-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VITAMIN D IS important. It builds strong bones and helps your immune system do its job. You may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,3247,3549,1283,85,46,543,1360,1690,25797,9439,21363,10110],"class_list":{"0":"post-152461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-heart","10":"tag-heart-attack","11":"tag-heart-health","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-nutrition","15":"tag-research","16":"tag-stroke","17":"tag-supplement","18":"tag-supplements","19":"tag-vitamin-d","20":"tag-vitamins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}