One in five women and one in four men has high blood pressure and thus an increased risk of various diseases such as heart attacks and strokes. This makes it all the more important to get the risk factor under control quickly.
Dangerous lifestyle
Not enough exercise, too much food rich in fat and sugar plus stress: the current lifestyle is a major threat to our health. Lifestyle factors have long been known to play a major role in the development and treatment of high blood pressure.
Does vitamin D regulate blood pressure?
Other factors, on the other hand, have been under discussion recently. These include the importance vitamin D plays in high blood pressure. That high vitamin D levels reduce the risk of high blood pressure – this is the conclusion reached in genome-wide association studies.
These studies are a new method in which the genetic material (genome), the genetic disposition, is linked to certain diseases: The distribution of diseases or symptoms in the population is related to certain genetic predispositions.
This method has already been used to identify certain single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that predetermine a person’s vitamin D status. SNP are genetic variants in the human genome.
Hypertension risk reduced by eight percent
In addition, an Australian research group at the University of South Australia has now used the methodology to prove a link between a genetically determined elevated vitamin D [25(OH)D] level and low blood pressure values.
For every 10% increase in vitamin D levels, the risk of high blood pressure was reduced by 8%.
The starting point was the genetic data of more than 146,000 people of European origin. The result is promising and shows a clear trend: systolic blood pressure decreased by 0.37 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 0.29 mmHg per ten percent increase in vitamin D concentration. In addition, the risk of hypertension decreased by eight percent.
Does vitamin D protect the heart?
This result corresponds to a series of research results that document similar relationships. These include a 29-year follow-up study conducted by the University of Copenhagen in 2012 with 10,170 Danes.
The clear result: too low a vitamin D status increases the risk of dying from heart disease by 81 percent.
The average value for vitamin D here was 44 nmol/l, a value typical for our latitudes, which is well below the recommended 75 nmol/l. The average value for vitamin D was 44 nmol/l, which was also well below the recommended 75 nmol/l.
Read more about the diverse role vitamin D plays in our health.
