Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic have made an important discovery about how too much of a good thing can be bad for our heart health.
They’ve been studying niacin, also known as vitamin B-3, which is a nutrient we often get from foods like cereals, flour, and oats.
For a long time, doctors thought niacin was great for lowering bad cholesterol and keeping our hearts healthy. But this new research has found a twist.
Led by Dr. Stanley Hazen, the research team found out that when we have too much niacin in our bodies, it breaks down into something called 4PY.
And here’s where things get interesting: having a lot of 4PY in our blood is not good for our hearts. The scientists discovered that people with higher levels of 4PY were more likely to have heart attacks, strokes, and other heart problems.
They did experiments and found that 4PY can cause inflammation in our blood vessels. Inflammation is a fancy word for swelling and irritation, and it’s not something you want happening in the vessels that carry blood to your heart and brain.
Over time, this can lead to atherosclerosis, which is a fancy name for when your arteries get hard and narrow, making it tough for blood to flow through.
This discovery is a big deal because it points to a new way that heart disease can develop, one that we didn’t know much about before.
Dr. Hazen and his team are excited because now that they know about 4PY and its effects, they can start looking for ways to treat it or even prevent it from causing heart disease in the first place.
Most of us get our niacin from food because it’s added to a lot of the things we eat every day, like bread and cereal.
This is done to make sure we get enough of it, which is important because not having enough niacin can cause health problems too. But, according to this research, about one in four people might be getting too much niacin, leading to high levels of 4PY.
Dr. Hazen likens our intake of niacin to filling a bucket with water from multiple taps. Once the bucket is full, it overflows, and our bodies have to deal with the extra, turning it into other substances, including 4PY.
He’s not saying we should stop eating niacin altogether—that wouldn’t be practical. But, this research might lead to a rethink on how much niacin is added to our foods.
The study also sheds light on why niacin has fallen out of favor as a treatment for lowering cholesterol. In the past, niacin was one of the first options for people with high cholesterol.
But over time, doctors noticed it wasn’t working as well as other treatments and sometimes even made things worse. This new research into 4PY helps explain why that might be.
Dr. Hazen’s work is part of a bigger effort to understand all the different things that can increase our risk of heart disease.
By studying patients over time and analyzing their blood, his team hopes to uncover more about how our bodies work and how we can keep our hearts healthy.
In the end, this research is a reminder that when it comes to what we eat and how it affects our health, there’s always more to learn.
And it highlights the importance of talking to a doctor before we decide to take any supplements or make big changes to our diets.
If you care about heart disease, please read studies that herbal supplements could harm your heart rhythm, and how eating eggs can help reduce heart disease risk.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies that apple juice could benefit your heart health, and results showing yogurt may help lower the death risks in heart disease.
The research findings can be found in Nature Medicine.
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