A new study has revealed that vitamin D supplements could play an important role in improving heart health and reducing the risks of diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes.
Researchers from China and the United States conducted a large review of 99 different studies involving over 17,000 people to understand how vitamin D affects heart and metabolic health.
The results are promising and suggest that personalized vitamin D treatment might be the key to better health for many people.
Published in the journal Engineering, this study highlights the importance of vitamin D for cardiometabolic health.
Cardiometabolic health refers to the health of the heart and blood vessels, as well as factors like blood sugar and cholesterol that affect your risk for diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
The researchers found that taking vitamin D supplements, at an average dose of about 3,320 International Units (IU) per day, helped lower several important health markers.
These included reductions in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar levels, and insulin, which is a hormone that helps control blood sugar.
The benefits of vitamin D were seen across many studies, but certain groups of people benefited the most.
According to the research, the most noticeable improvements occurred in people who fit specific categories:
- Non-Western populations
- Individuals with low vitamin D levels (below 15 ng/mL)
- People with a body mass index (BMI) below 30 (not obese)
- Older adults aged 50 or above
For these groups, vitamin D had a stronger effect on improving heart health and lowering disease risks. The researchers believe that these differences show the importance of personalized approaches when it comes to vitamin D supplements. Instead of recommending the same dose for everyone, doctors might need to consider factors like a person’s age, weight, ethnicity, and current vitamin D levels to get the best results.
Another key takeaway from the study is that longer periods of vitamin D supplementation—three months or more—were more effective than shorter treatments. Higher doses were also found to have a bigger impact, especially in the groups that benefited most.
This research opens the door for new strategies in preventive medicine, meaning doctors could use vitamin D to help prevent heart disease and other related health problems. By tailoring vitamin D supplements to fit individual needs, health professionals may be able to reduce the number of people suffering from cardiometabolic diseases.
However, the researchers also noted that more studies are needed to understand exactly how vitamin D works in the body to improve heart health and to explore the potential risks of taking high doses of the vitamin over a long time.
These findings highlight the potential for vitamin D to become a key part of personalized healthcare, especially as cardiovascular diseases remain one of the leading causes of death around the world.
This study gives hope that targeted vitamin D treatments could one day become a more effective way to keep our hearts healthy and prevent serious diseases.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
