B vitamin folic acid protects your health....

Today's post: Thursday, 10-2-2008

Our ancestors evolved to eat wild caught animal protein, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.

So, since they ate a lot of vegetables, particularly green vegetables, and fruits that contained folic acid, they got lots of it almost every day.

One recent study found that less than one person out of 12 in the United States now eats that many fruits and vegetables. That study found that the people who DID eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables had MUCH better health and lived longer. This may be in part because they got enough folic acid in their food.

High homocysteine levels in the blood, 9.0 or more, particularly 12.0 or more, predict heart disease and early mental decline, and even Alzheimer’s disease. And, an abundant supply of all the key B vitamins, particularly folic acid, B12, and B6, helps prevent high levels of homocysteine. And, folic acid seems to be most effective of the 3 in doing so.

(Important note. 50 mg to 100 mg to at the very most 150 mg a day of B6 is beneficial. But a bit over 100 mg a day or much more has been found to cause numbness and may cause nerve damage. So, for B6, above 100 mg a day, taking more is NOT better. I take 70 mg of B6 myself to get plenty without going over 100.)

So, when I found an article yesterday in my Early to Rise email with even more health benefits of folic acid, I was very pleased. I include it below and then will add my comments after that.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

"Folate Making Headlines Again

By James B. LaValle

You can learn a lot about what’s good for your body - and what isn’t - by reading medical literature. But you have to be careful. Take, for instance, two recent studies that gave negative press to some very beneficial vitamins. The way these study results were reported can give the impression that we don’t need vitamins B12, B6, and folate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here’s the real story…

Both studies found that a cocktail of B12, B6, and folate lowers homocysteine (a byproduct of an amino acid found in the blood). But, surprisingly, they didn’t find that this translated into less risk of mortality or cardiovascular events.

In fact, several previous studies have shown that homocysteine is a marker for increased risk of heart disease and stroke. And homocysteine levels go up when the body doesn’t have enough B vitamins. Also, low levels of folate have been associated with increased cardiovascular risk.

Folate affects a lot more than heart health. It regulates DNA in cells, which is important for healthy cell division. For mothers-to-be, adequate folate is needed to prevent neural tube defects in developing fetuses, miscarriages, and Down’s syndrome. It is particularly effective in preventing colon and breast cancer. And it has been found to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by more than 50 percent. It also reduces high blood pressure, as well as the risk of stroke.

What I find most disturbing about these two recent studies is that because both found a slight increased cancer risk in patients taking folate and B vitamin supplements, researchers are now questioning their safety. And because of the way this has been reported, people are now afraid of these essential nutrients. Meanwhile, the increase was so small it was not even considered statistically significant. Plus, the overwhelming majority of studies on folate have found it to be cancer protective.

What should you do? Let science continue to sort out the confusion. In the meantime, make sure you get adequate folate to protect your health - and not only in your daily multivitamin. Folate is found in leafy green vegetables, oranges, broccoli, asparagus, peas, and some beans.

There is one caveat, however. About 20 percent of the population has a gene mutation that prevents them from getting the benefit of the folate in their food or the usual form found in multivitamins. It is a good idea to get tested by your doctor for this mutation. If you have it, you need to take folate in its activated form: 5 methyl tetra hydro folate (5 MTHF).

[Ed. Note: Sometimes it can be overwhelming to try to sort through the massive amounts of information coming out about your health. Let ETR's health experts make it easy for you. You can get advice from fitness and nutrition experts - and their interpretations of the latest breakthroughs - in ETR's free natural health e-letter. Sign up today.

It truly is possible to improve your health just by making a few simple changes to your diet and lifestyle. James B. LaValle, RPh, ND, CCN - founder of the LaValle Metabolic Institute and a nationally recognized expert on natural therapies - can give you easy-to-understand directions for living the healthy life you've always wanted. ….]”

X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

(Early to Rise still publishes a health article each day six days a week, Monday through Saturday. You can sign up for their emails at www.EarlytoRise.com .

And, they also now have a health only email that comes out every Tuesday and every Friday which you can sign up for at www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com . Over a week or two, I virtually always find a health article that I find valuable in each of them.)

The studies he refers to on lowering homocysteine were done in people who had sky high homocysteine levels for years before the studies. And, as a result, they had cardiovascular disease when they were studied.

The lack of protection from using B vitamins to lower their homocysteine levels that was found in those studies may well have been that though it may have helped prevent more future damage to their health, their blood vessels were already so damaged that no changes would occur without reversing that damage also.

The other research very strongly suggests that if you get or take the B vitamins, including folic acid, BEFORE your blood vessels become too damaged, it DOES lower your homocysteine and will tend to prevent the damage from occurring.

Also, many of the damaged people in the study that showed no protective effect had the damage and the previously high homocysteine both caused in part by smoking. Since smoking also tends to cause cancers, this may well have changed the result of taking the B vitamins to lower homocysteine in terms of cancers found.

So, it looks clear to me that taking B vitamins along with extra folic acid is a good ideas if you are a nonsmoker and don’t already have advanced cardiovascular disease.

However, if you smoke, quitting is much more important and protective. And, if you already have advanced cardiovascular disease you may also need something that can reverse that damage to get real protection.

That said, the most important part of this article may be at the end.

If it’s true that one out of five people don’t process folic acid well, that’s a HUGE number of people who are likely to develop poor health.

So, if the information is correct, this is front page news.

For example, it may mean that for folic acid, to be sure you get enough – because you might be one of the fifth of people who don’t process it well, you may need to take 1600 mcg a day or more of folic acid to have good health.

In fact, one of the most knowledgeable preventive medicine doctors I’ve met said that he found that in his practice, he had to have his patients take that much to reliably see good health benefits in all of them. And, this new information may explain why.

When I find out more about this, I will post it here. And, I hope to hear back from the author of the article with some answers to questions about it that were not in his article quoted above.