Serving Size: 1-2 Tablets
Direction: 1-2 Tablets, 1-2 Times a Day
Bottle Contains: 100 Tablets

 

Amount per Serving:

Vitamin B1 100 mg
Vitamin B2 100 mg
Vitamin B6 100 mg
Vitamin B12 100 mcg
Niacinamide 100 mg
Pantothenic Acid 100 mg
Biotin 100 mcg
Folic Acid 400 mcg
Choline 100 mg
Inositol 100 mg
Para Aminobenzoic Acid 100 mg

 

B VITAMINS

While certain fats are certainly associated with high risk of heart disease, and while high cholesterol certainly increases the risk of arterial damage, there is a new story unfolding about the heart- a story whose discoveries may help us truly cut the risk of America’s number one killer as well as a host of other conditions.

One and a half million heart attacks strike Americans each year, and half a million people die of heart disease annually.
Cardiac disease will continue to ring out its death toll until we accept the whole truth, which is that high cholesterol alone is not the root of heart disease. In fact, many people die from heart attacks and coronary artery disease with normal or low cholesterol levels.

Meanwhile, a special derivative of an amino acid called homocysteine lurks in the shadows, letting cholesterol take the blame as it stealthily sabotages our arteries. Homocysteine is derived from an amino acid called methionine.
Methionine is found in many foods, like garlic, onions, legumes, fish, eggs, and meat. A process called transsulfuration turns methionine into homocysteine.

Physicians who practice natural therapies are not the only ones taking note of homocysteine’s dangers: A 1997 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected journals in traditional medicine, confirms that increased plasma levels of homocysteine confer an independent risk of vascular disease. This means that even if you are a healthy person with normal cholesterol levels, no family history of illness, and good eating habits, high levels of homocysteine in your body can predispose you to heart disease. And this predisposition to heart risk is powerfully increased if you smoke or have hypertension.

As a pathologist at Harvard Medical School, Kilmer McCully made a series of intriguing observations about homocysteine and our hearts. Two children had died of a genetic disorder called homocystinuria, which is commonly associated with elevated homocysteine levels. Strangely, autopsies showed that these youngsters had a severe degree of arteriosclerosis, or hardened arteries-a condition normally seen only in much older individuals.

McCully hypothesized that this arterial damage was caused by excess homocysteine and might also occur in other people who had elevated levels of the amino acid but not the genetic disorder. This was such a radical departure from the accepted cholesterol theory of heart disease that it got him thrown out of Harvard. He ended up working at a small veteran’s hospital in Rhode Island.

Getting to the Heart of Homocysteine

Homocysteine is created from-and related to-several quite innocuous compounds, like the amino acid methionine.
It can be changed in two directions: it can use vitamin B6 to change into two other important amino acids, cysteine and taurine, or it can use vitamin B12 and folic acid to return back to its methionine form.
In a normal, healthy body, homocysteine is just a brief intermediate step between methionine, cysteine, and taurine.

But in as many as one in four victims of heart disease, that step is not so brief. If our levels of vitamin B6, B12,
or folic acid are low, then homocysteine cannot be transformed back into these safe substances, and it accumulates to dangerous amounts. Some inviduals may have a genetic predisposition to elevated homocysteine levels and may need extra B vitamins.

Homocysteine causes damage to the lining of the arteries and any low density lipoprotein(LDL) cholesterol that might be found there. And this is why LDL cholesterol-often known as “bad” cholesterol-is to harmful: not because it is the root of coronary artery disease, but because, when oxidized, it causes free radical damage and makes arterial disease worse. Homocysteine may well be the root of much coronary artery disease. Think of homocysteine as the creator of potholes in the walls of the arteries; and when fat or cholesterol surround these potholes, they clumsily plug up the hole, further aggrevating the damage.

The current mainstream treatment for heart disease includes coronary bypass surgery, literally a chest-splitting procedure; angioplasty, which inflates your vulnerable arteries like baloons to deflect cholesterol plaques; and numerous potent medications with various side effects.

Although the big news is that homocysteine, and not just cholesterol, is a major independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, there are many other ways that this amino acid exerts its harmful effects. Heart disease is just the first.

Heart Disease: An amazing number of conclusive studies clearly demonstrate that high levels of homocysteine can increase your risk of heart disease, including myocardial infarctions and coronary artery disease. A recent report in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and vascular biology stated that for every 10 percent increase in homocysteine levels,
heart disease risk increases by the same amount.

Similary, a study in JAMA showed that, of 1,500 men and women, the ones in the top 20 percent of
homocysteine levels had double the risk of heart disease. However, in 1998, a study in the journal circulation showed homocysteine levels were not found to be an independent risk factor coronary heart disease.
Morer esearch will be necessary.