According to a June 2024 announcement from the American Heart Association (AHA), by 2050, 60% of U.S. adults will suffer from heart disease or stroke. “Over the past decade, we have seen a sharp increase in cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity, all of which increase the risk of developing heart disease and stroke,” Dhruv S. Kazi, MD, MSc, vice director of the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Cardiac Outcomes Research in Boston and chief of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said in an AHA press release. So how can these risk factors be managed?
Eating a heart-healthy diet and exercising regularly are great ways to manage your cardiovascular health, but making complete lifestyle changes can be daunting. If you want to start small, new research from China suggests that reducing your risk of stroke may be as simple as taking a certain supplement every day.
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Previous studies have shown that a lack of vitamin D may increase the risk of heart disease, and cardiologists Healthy Reader’s Digest Prioritizing vitamin D in your diet was found to be one of the main habits people adopted to protect their heart health, according to a meta-analysis published in June 2024. Brain and Behavior It turns out this protection may also extend to reducing the risk of stroke.
The researchers reviewed 27 studies involving 45,302 participants, of which 20 studies focused on vitamin D levels and stroke risk, and seven studies focused on vitamin D levels and stroke outcomes.
The researchers observed that people with low vitamin D levels had a 28% higher risk of having a stroke and a nearly three-fold higher risk of slow recovery after a stroke. There was no significant association between low vitamin D levels and the risk of hemorrhagic stroke or intracerebral bleeding, but there was a strong association between low vitamin D levels and an increased risk of ischemic stroke caused by blood clots.
