Heart Vitamins

An essential part of maintaining your health, heart vitamins contribute to the well-being of your cardiovascular system as well as the rest of your body. Therefore, you have to be sure to include them in your diet to prevent heart disease and the onset of other preventable conditions.

What are heart healthy vitamins?

Of all the essential nutrients that our bodies need on a regular basis, vitamins are perhaps the most researched and well-known. Ever since we were children, we were told of the importance of taking our vitamins. These nutrients help our body perform hundreds of different functions and without we simply cannot survive.

Heart vitamins are specific vitamins which contribute to overall heart health and function, while helping prevent heart disease and other cardiovascular issues.

The most important group of vitamins specifically for heart health is the B Vitamin Family. These vitamins serve specific functions that can significantly reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

The B Vitamins, specifically folic acid (Vitamin B9), Vitamin B6 and Vitamin B12 are all responsible for helping the body remove homocysteine from the blood. High levels of homocysteine can cause artery damage. Meat is a good source of B vitamins, which is why vegetarians have an increased risk of dangerous homocysteine levels. It is especially important that they supplement these important heart healthy vitamins.

Vitamin B3, known more commonly as niacin, may also reduce cholesterol in high concentrations, although further testing is needed to prove this conclusively. As far as other heart vitamins are concerned, Vitamin E and Vitamin C work in conjunction with each other to prevent heart disease and other ailments through their antioxidant abilities.

Antioxidants are substances that remove toxic byproducts of chemical reactions in the body. That's why you hear so much about antioxidants - they are responsible for clearing out highly reactive chemicals that circulate in the body, making sure they don't cause cell and tissue damage. It is this damage that is believed to cause heart disease, cancer and premature aging.