What Vitamins to take for Peripheral Artery Disease
The arteries take the oxygen from the heart around the body. When we eat the wrong diet continuously the plaque and fats build up in the walls of the arteries and start to block them. If the blockage becomes significant it causes heart attack and stroke. To avoid this from happening changes to diet are required, and the changes need to become permanent. The good news is that there are some vitamins and natural products that will help improve heart health and prevent further accumulation of plaque in the arteries.
How do You Treat Peripheral Artery Disease Naturally?
We will look at what vitamins to take for peripheral disease, arteries that will keep the plaque from forming. Although we need to know that vitamins won’t completely clear plaque, and we will require a permanent healthy diet.
Omega 3 Fatty Acids
Are commonly found in fatty fish like salmon. If you don’t like fatty fish try an Omega 3 supplement and eat Flax seed and Chia seed on your breakfast cereal. High doses of Omega 3 fish oil are recommended, 500 mg for adults per day.
Flavanols
Cocoa Powder with 85% of cocoa content can help you to achieve PAD health benefits. Who would have thought that cocoa had healing properties? Blood flow and muscle strength are shown to improve with the consumption of cocoa. it also improves the ability of cells to regenerate. If you are an older person, you may find that you experience leg pain when walking, try drinking three cups of coca a day to experience increased blood flow to your legs and feet.
Vitamin K2
For people who already have PAD, a vitamin K2 supplement will be required. However, for those who want to increase their dietary intake of vitamin K2 sources include dairy products, Kombucha a fermented drink, sauerkraut, and some fermented meats. If you are experiencing leg cramps drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.
Eat Spinach
Spinach has powerful antioxidant properties and has been proven to lower blood pressure. It helps the arteries to remain less stiff and able to transport the blood around the body. Spinach can either be eaten cooked or in a salad.
Vitamin B
The folate contained in B vitamins can cause reduced mortality from PAD and a study showed for every 400 g/d increments in folate intake, the multivariate-adjusted PAD risk decreased by 21%. This is quite complicated to sift through, but it shows that really high consumption of folate could prevent PAD from occurring at all. We have long known that folate is essential in our diets, and some years ago it was added to breakfast foods to prevent, miscarriage in early pregnancy through a lack of folate in the diet of pregnant women. So vitamin B6 and Vitamin B12 in recommended doses contain folate and should be commenced earlier in life in both men and women, to prevent or prolong the onset of PAD later in life.
Lifestyle and Health Issues in PAD
Various lifestyle factors can influence the onset of PAD, and of course one of these is smoking. Smoking increases the formation of plaque in the blood vessels, and smoke causes the blood to thicken and form clots inside the veins. The sad reality is if you smoke you are 4x more likely to die of heart disease. Cigarettes contain chemicals that make the walls of the arteries sticky, and then they constrict not allowing much blood through and ultimately blocking altogether. Smoking can also cause an irregular heart rhythm, causing the heart to work harder.
Type 2 diabetes is another lifestyle metabolic illness that also affects our arteries. This can often be reversed with a strict diet and lifestyle changes like exercise. The first sign of the damage caused by lifestyle and weight gain shows up in our blood test with increased blood sugar and triglycerides, often accompanied by high blood pressure, and an indicator that the arteries are narrowing.
As the arteries in the extremities begin to block off, difficulty in walking can occur, and intermittent claudication sets in because the muscles need more blood. Symptoms that this could be happening are:
• cramping
• numbness
• pain
• weakness in legs.
• difficulty in walking.
Obesity, nearly 40% of American adults over 20 are obese, and medical costs are skyrocketing. Many of these people will go on to develop PAD.
Vitamin D
There is not much vitamin D available in our diets, as it is mainly obtained from sunlight. Its prime role is to increase intestinal calcium absorption and it also affects the vascular system. A recent review of a study shows how Vitamin D impacts the vascular system, making it even more important than we once thought. Vitamin D consumption varies in different people, and some can be obtained through fish oil supplements. Lack of vitamin D has been recently shown to be a risk factor in atherosclerosis and may help to control blood pressure and hypertension meaning it could protect against PAD. Serum levels and coronary artery calcification appear to be linked in cases of coronary artery disease. Osteoporosis and vascular calcification show evidence of an association, and more research needs to be carried out to establish the prevalence and severity of the severity of coronary artery disease in these cases.
During pregnancy, the transportation of Vitamin D across the placenta is enhanced in the last trimester. However, there are no studies to support that maternal vitamin D intake and impaired arterial elasticity in the fetus. The studies continue, as there appears to be an unknown role that vitamin D plays in late pregnancy even before birth, and in the neonatal period.
Conclusion
Over the last 50 years, there have been many arguments that Vitamin D is a risk factor in arteriosclerosis. People with myocardial infarction had a higher rate of vitamin D than others. However, this has not been conclusively proven and will provide very interesting research studies for the future of what vitamins to take for peripheral disease, arteries. Hopefully, we will learn a lot more about the causes of PAD.