Folic Acid Supplements are a Health Hazard
Stop
Folic Acid Pills Now
Limit Your Intake of Fortified Flour Products (in the USA)
Don�t Lower Your Homocysteine Levels with Supplements
Taking supplements with as little as 0.8 mg/day of folic
acid has been shown to increase your risk of dying of heart
disease and cancer, according to the results of the first
large randomized treatment trial to carefully examine this
issue.1 The Norwegian Vitamin Trial (NORVIT) of
3,749 patients, who were followed for 3.5 years was designed
to show the benefits of taking supplements�but the results
were contrary to expectations. Folic acid supplementation
was found to lower homocysteine levels by 28%., but to
increase relative risks of heart attack, stroke, and death
by 20%, along with a more than a 30% increase in cancer.
Those with the highest baseline homocysteine levels (13 umol/L
or greater) suffered the most harm from taking supplements
of folic acid.

Homocysteine Is Only a Risk Factor
Elevated levels of the amino acid homocysteine, found with a
blood test have been associated with many common diseases,
including heart disease, strokes, venous thrombosis,
dementia, and Alzheimer�s disease. The commonly made, but
incorrect, assumption is that these diseases are caused by
elevated homocysteine in the body and the solution is to
give medications (vitamin pills) to fix the problem.
However, homocysteine is not the problem. Elevated
homocysteine is only a sign that the body is becoming
diseased and at risk of a tragedy. We call this type of
sign a �risk factor��it predicts future risk, but it is not
a disease in itself�no one dies of an elevated homocysteine
level�most commonly, clogged heart arteries are the actual
cause of death for those people showing this sign. So what
is the real meaning of this risk factor?
Homocysteine levels increase when people eat more meat
and fewer vegetables. These same dietary habits
cause other signs (risk factors)�indicating a higher chance
of death and disability�to rise; like cholesterol,
triglycerides, uric acid, blood sugar, lipoprotein a,
C-reactive protein, blood pressure, and body weight.
Fortunately, correcting the poor diet heals the underlying
disease, and at the same time the risk factors show
improvement.
Folic Acid Supplements Overload the Body
Consuming more than 0.2 mg of folic acid daily floods the
bloodstream with this vitamin, overloading the metabolic
capacities of the body, causing imbalances that
increase the risk of heart disease and cancer.2
Folic acid is a synthetic version of the natural vitamin,
folate, found in plant foods. Folate from food is essential
for good health. Folic acid sold in capsules is a
medication at best and a toxin at worst. When given in
doses of 0.8 mg it will lower homocysteine by about 30% (3
to 4 umol/L).3 Higher doses than 0.8 mg have no
greater benefit for lowering blood levels of homocysteine.
Folic Acid Mandated for U.S. Cereal Products

January 1998 was the mandatory
deadline for the fortification of grain products
with folic acid in the United States. Folic acid
was added to flours used to make bread, rolls, and
crackers. Another hefty source of this supplement comes
from enriched (vitamin-added) �ready-to-eat cereals.�
Since 1998, folic acid intake
has increased significantly in every segment of the U.S.
population with the average additional intake of 0.22
mg/day.3,4 Remember, as little is .2 mg causes
overloads and imbalances with an increased risk of illness .
A significant segment of the USA population is now consuming
over 1 mg/day of folic acid daily�an amount found by the
NORVIT study to increase the risk of heart disease and
cancer.
Doctors Harm Patients with Supplements
Cardiologists are fond of
recommending vitamin pills to treat elevated homocysteine in
hopes of preventing further heart disease in their patients.
One of the most commonly prescribed preparations is called
Foltx � a combination of 2.5 mg of folic Acid, 25 mg of
vitamin B6, and 2 mg of vitamin B12. A recent study showed
a similar preparation reduced the homocysteine levels of
patients with a history of stroke by 2 units (umol/L), but
found no difference in risk of future strokes, heart
attacks, or death compared to a control group.5

Another recent study showing folic acid actually causes the
heart arteries to close should cause doctors to mend their
prescribing practices. After six months of supplementation
in 636 heart patients with stents (stents are wire-mesh
supports placed in the coronary arteries during
angioplasty), the Folate After Coronary Intervention
Trial found those patients taking folic acid had
significantly more narrowing of the arteries, more artery
closure (restenosis), and more major adverse cardiac events
compared to those taking placebo�the exact opposite of what
investigators had expected to find.6,7 As
expected, the homocysteine blood levels were reduced by the
above treatment. The authors recommended that the routine
administration of folate treatment not be advocated at the
present time.
Even
with all this condemning evidence, you can easily find
experts (many working with vitamin companies) trying to
convince the unaware buyer that high-dose folic acid
supplementation�as much as 5 mg/day�will be good for their
heart and blood vessels.8
Appropriate Response to Homocysteine in Your Blood
The
main motivation behind fortification of flours and taking
supplemental vitamins has been to reduce the occurrence of
serious birth defects, especially the occurrence of neural
tube defects (NTDs). The effort seems to be working a
little�since the onset of fortification there has
been a 19% decrease in the incidence of NTDs. Unfortunately,
these same widespread recommendations to take folic acid may
be causing more heart disease and cancer. So, what to do?

All
that money and effort now spent on supplementation with the
hope of reducing birth defects, heart disease, and cancer
should be directed towards educational programs to teach
people to eat more legumes, vegetables, and fruits�the
plentiful and safe sources of folic acid. (The name folic
comes from the word foliage, which refers to plants.) When
packaged in the plant, folic acid is never harmful and
always beneficial. Further efforts should be made towards
making sure all people have ready access to plant-foods.
Because of the overwhelming evidence that the vitamin
supplements people are buying are a serious health hazard, I
propose these products be labeled with bold warnings like:
�Taking Vitamin E can raise your risk of dying,� Vitamin A
(retinol) can damage your bones and cause birth defects,�
�Beta carotene may raise your risk of cancer,� and �Folic
acid causes heart disease.� All supplement packages should
also tell people that vitamins and other nutrients are best
obtained from healthy vegetable foods. For more information
on the hazards of supplementation, please read from my
newsletter archives the following:
August 2003: Plants, not Pills, for Vitamins and Minerals:http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030800puvitaminsandminerals.htm
November 2004: Vitamins Do Not Prevent Cancer and May
Increase Likelihood of Death: How Supplements Can Make You
Sicker
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/2004nl/041100pufavorite5.htm
July
2005: Neither Aspirin Nor Vitamin E Will Save Women
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/july/050700fav5.htm
February 2004: Treating Homocysteine with Vitamins Fails
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/040200pufavorite5.htm
References:
1) Bonaa KH. NORVIT: Randomized
trial of homocysteine-lowering with B-vitamins for secondary
prevention of cardiovascular disease after acute myocardial
infarction. Program and Abstracts from the European Society
of Cardiology Congress 2005; September 3-7, 2005; Stockholm,
Sweden. Hot Line II.
2)
Quinlivan EP,
Gregory JF 3rd. Effect of food fortification on
folic acid intake in the United States. Am J Clin Nutr.
2003 Jan;77(1):221-5.
3) Homocysteine
Lowering Trailists Collaboration.
Dose-dependent effects of folic acid on blood
concentrations of homocysteine: a meta-analysis of the
randomized trials.
Am J Clin Nutr. 2005
Oct;82(4):806-812.
4)
Choumenkovitch SF,
Selhub J,
Wilson PW,
Rader
JI,
Rosenberg IH,
Jacques PF. Folic acid intake from fortification
in United States exceeds predictions.
J Nutr. 2002
Sep;132(9):2792-8.
5)
Toole JF . Lowering homocysteine in patients with ischemic
stroke to prevent recurrent stroke, myocardial infarction,
and death: the Vitamin Intervention for Stroke Prevention (VISP)
randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2004 Feb
4;291(5):565-75.
6) Lange
H. Folate After Coronary
Intervention Trial� (FACIT).
http://www.accitalia.it/congress_centre/meeting_int/detail.asp?acr_trial=FACIT
Lange H. The folate after coronary intervention trial (FACIT).
Scientific presentation at the 52nd Annual Scientific
Sessions of the American College of Cardiology, Chicago,
March 30th, 2003.
7)
Schnyder G, Roffi M, Flammer Y, et
al. Effects of homocysteine-lowering therapy on
restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention for
narrowings in small coronary arteries. Am J Cardiol 2003;
91:1265-1269.
8)
LifeExtension:
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2005/mar2005_report_folic_01.htm?source=Google&key=folic_acid_supplements&WT.srch=1 |