Vitamin E Reduces Inflammation: Key to Reducing Heart Disease, Stroke and Other Health Problems
1/31/2005
(HealthNewsDigest.com)…NEW YORK, January 27, 2005 – Vitamin E plays a significant role in both reducing inflammation and cleansing the body of damaging free radicals, according to a prominent cardiovascular surgeon speaking today at a health and science writers’ workshop on vitamin E and health, held at the New York Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the Council for Responsible Nutrition. However, Americans don’t consume enough vitamins and minerals in their diets because of modern methods of food production, so they should consider using supplements to replace the missing nutrients.
Inflammation is the heart of the matter. It’s becoming clear that inflammation plays an important causative role in heart disease, Gerald M. Lemole, M.D., told the group. He is W. Samuel Carpenter III Distinguished Chair of Cardiovascular Surgery, Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Christiana Care Health Services, and Professor
of Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University. The cardiac surgeon explained that normal inflammation is the body’s protective response to toxins, pathogens, irritants,
trauma, free radicals, and unrecognized molecules. However, things can go wrong, and groups of inflamed white blood cells may build up, rupture, and trigger a heart attack. The body’s response to this is an elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) level, homocysteine level, and fibrinogen-all implicated in worsening heart disease.
In fact, cardiologists now consider an elevated CRP level to be an increasingly important marker for heart disease. He told the group that other risk factors for inflammation are obesity, smoking, genetic predisposition, high stress, and diets rich in highly processed and carbohydrate-rich foods. Chronic inflammation, he said, is linked to periodontal disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer as well as heart disease. Antioxidants such as vitamin E can ameliorate that risk.
In discussing why nutritional supplementation may be necessary, Dr. Lemole listed several reasons such as environmental stress, nutritional deficiencies in our
food supply, inadequacy of the recommended requirements, constitutional variations, and medically induced deficiencies. He said, We’ve industrialized farm production, and that’s led to serious problems in the micronutritional composition of foods.
Growth hormones and antibiotics, which deplete vitamins A and B, are used in over half of commercial livestock. Refinement of sugars, grains, flours, and other food has deprived us of consuming many essential and nutritional ingredients.
Dr. Lemole told the group that the situation is worsening. There are fewer and fewer naturally occurring antioxidants in our food supply. He cautioned, We know that an inflammatory process can trigger certain diseases. We’re aware that age-related immune deficiency is caused by free radicals and that it can be reversed by antioxidants. And unfortunately, we’re all too familiar now with the realization that wall of the artery is a living, reactive tissue capable of mounting an inflammatory
response. That inflammatory response is heart disease.
source: Provided by HealthNewsDigest.com