Increasing Evidence That Adding More Vitamin D To Your Diet Reduces Heart Disease

We’ve known for a long time that vitamin D aides in the development of strong bones, but increasing research is now also showing that it’s also a vital factor in lowing heart disease and high blood pressure.

Image courtesy of healthmango.com.

Some of the best natural sources of vitamin D are found in fish like salmon, tuna, and mackerel. Smaller amounts of natural vitamin D are found in foods like beef liver, cheese, and egg yolks. It’s a little less known that mushrooms also contain some natural vitamin D.

Vitamin D is so important that other foods are fortified with it. These include some breakfast cereals, orange juices, and dairy products like milk, cheese, and yogurt.

People also naturally make vitamin D when their skin is exposed to the sun, but today’s largely indoor lifestyles are making it harder and harder for people to get the necessary benefits of sun exposure, especially during the wintertime, according to research from the Medical College of Georgia (MCG).

We use to only associate vitamin D deficiency with rickets (a softening and weakening of the bones) and osteoporosis (the thinning of bone tissue and loss of bone density over time).

New research is now also showing a correlation between low levels of vitamin D in a body and the presence of heart disease and high blood pressure.

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A Few More Reasons to Love Caffeine

Courtesy of healthhype.com

Most of us can’t start the day without at least one cup of caffeinated coffee. The obvious reason is that it wakes us up and makes us more alert. The International Food Information Council calls caffeine in low doses “a mild stimulant to the central nervous system.”

The council suggests that “moderate caffeine consumption for the general healthy population is about 300 mg per day, or about three eight-ounce cups of coffee.” So! Are their any benefits to consuming caffeinated drinks besides making us more alert? The answer is a huge ‘yes,’ according to a report by WebMD, which finds that beyond improving mental alertness, in moderate amounts, caffeine can alleviate the symptoms of conditions such as asthma and low blood pressure.

It appears that caffeine can improve airway functions ‘somewhat’ in people with asthma for up to four hours. Caffeine has also been shown to elevate low blood pressure in older people, which can help relieve problems such as dizziness when standing up.

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