Heart beat: Blood pressure and a B vitamin
Heart beat
Blood pressure and a B vitamin
Folic acid, one of the eight B vitamins, plays a key role in preventing spina bifida and anencephaly in newborns. These two birth defects occur when the tube that ultimately becomes the spinal cord, brain, and surrounding bone doesn’t close as it should. In adults, folic acid also helps reduce levels of homocysteine, and so may play a role in preventing heart disease. Now a new report suggests that getting plenty of this vitamin could help keep blood pressure in check.
In a study of more than 150,000 female nurses, 20,000 developed high blood pressure over an eight-year period. Compared with women who got less than 200 micrograms (mcg) of folic acid a day — well below the daily recommended intake of 400 mcg — those who took in 1,000 mcg a day were half as likely to have developed high blood pressure.
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