Older Women:Cut Cardiovascular Disease Death in Half

Last summer, headlines announced that a large study in the Journal of the AMA found that taking vitamin E conferred no protection from major cardiovascular events (i.e. heart attack and stroke) or cancer.

What the data actually demonstrated -- at least for older women -- was quite different.

The study followed 40,000 women of all ages over a period of ten years. 4,000 of these were women over the age of 65.

For these older women, "supplementation with 600 IU of natural source vitamin E every other day" resulted in "a 24 percent decrease in major cardiovascular events, a 34 percent reduction in heart attacks, and a 49 percent reduction in cardiovascular death."

For more information: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/new/vitewhs05.html

Decline in food's nutrient content since 1930

From Discover magazine, May 2005, page 56:

"In 1997 a British study compared the mineral content of fruits and vegetables grown in the 1930s with the mineral content of produce grown in the 1980s. It found that several nutrients had dropped dramatically, including calcium (down nearly 30 percent), iron (down 32 percent), and magnesium (down 21 percent)."

One of my earlier posts showed how nutrients in food had declined from 1975 to 1998, according to US Department of Agriculture surveys. Putting those study results together with the British study, it is likely that the nutritional decline of fruits and vegetables from 1930 to the present is quite dramatic, by any standard.

It has become increasingly hard to get adequate nutrition from food, even if a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables is consumed. But we are not all the same. Persons at the end of the Bell Curve requiring greater than normal amounts of nutrients to maintain good health may find it not merely hard, but impossible to obtain the nutrients they need from diet alone.