Word: folics
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Most physicians knew it resulted from a shortage of folic acid but thought that problem was confined to alcoholics who did not eat a balanced diet and to people with digestive disorders...
...Victor D. Herbert, a Harvard Medical School researcher who used himself as a test subject in the early 1960s to reveal the preventative powers of folic acid, died of cancer recently at his home in New York...
...prove his theory that the folic acid link was far more widespread, Herbert eliminated all foods from his diet which contained folic acid, which is normally found in green leafy vegetables and some fruits...
Fortunately, there's a simple way to minimize that effect: boost your intake of B vitamins, especially folic acid. You don't even have to take vitamin supplements. In 1998 the government mandated that cereal and flour manufacturers add folic acid to their products --not to fight heart disease but because it prevents neural-tube defects such as spina bifida in newborns. The other major sources of B vitamins are beans and--you guessed it--leafy green vegetables...
...Boston University School of Medicine, who wrote an editorial accompanying the two JAMA articles: "If you're already at high risk for heart disease, having your homocysteine levels tested is probably appropriate. If you're in good health, there's no point." Taking a multivitamin with 400 micrograms of folic acid certainly won't hurt. An even better idea, as always, is to eat plenty of leafy green vegetables, since they're high in the sorts of natural compounds that not only protect your heart but also may reduce your cancer risk...