Word: folic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Should everyone be getting more folic acid? That's the question on a lot of doctors' minds this week. Though not as famous as vitamin C, folic acid plays a crucial role in the development of just about every cell in the body. A member of the B-vitamin family, it's found naturally in orange juice, beans and green vegetables. There is some evidence that folic acid may reduce the risk of heart disease, but it is best known for its role in preventing spina bifida and other birth defects. Indeed ever since 1998, when the Food and Drug...
...found that subjects who had high levels of a particular amino acid called homocysteine in their blood were twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's as those who didn't. The finding is important because one of the easiest ways to lower homocysteine levels is to get plenty of folic acid...
...will get Alzheimer's, or that low homocysteine levels will protect you from dementia. It's not even certain, warns Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a neurologist at Boston University who led the study, that "lowering homocysteine levels will lower the risk of Alzheimer's." But the case for adding folic acid to your diet is getting better all the time...
...course the best source of any vitamin is a healthy diet. For those of us who still don't eat our beans and vegetables, most multivitamins contain the recommended daily folic-acid dose of 400 micrograms. (Eating four slices of enriched bread gives you the equivalent of roughly 100 micrograms.) There is no risk of overdose, although high levels of folic acid can mask the signs of pernicious anemia in people who have developed the disorder. Folic acid by itself may not keep the doctor away, but there's no harm trying...
FORTIFYING RESULTS Just two years after folic acid, a B vitamin, was added to many grain products in the U.S., certain birth defects of the brain and spine are down 19%. Enriched food provides about a quarter of the 400 micrograms a day that experts say women of childbearing age need. The rest can come from supplements, hyperfortified cereals and leafy green vegetables...