When quitting smoking, here’s something you can do to improve heart health rapidly

If you smoke, I don’t have to tell you that quitting is the best thing you can do for your health.

But you can do something else for yourself while you’re kicking the habit. Despite its reputation as a villain, supplementing with vitamin E might restore your health faster.

In a new study, longtime smokers kicked their habits while taking gamma-tocopherol or a placebo. Gamma is one of the four tocopherol forms of vitamin E. Subjects took 500 mg daily.

The benefits were huge.

In the E group, researchers found significant improvement in flow-mediated dilation. This is a measure of blood vessel function.

That, in turn, reduced heart disease risk by about 20 percent more than the placebo group.

Also, two markers for inflammation declined further in the E group than the placebo group.

The takeaway here is that there’s a simple, safe way to erase a lot of the damage smoking has done over the years. So even people who thought “It’s too late to matter,” have a new reason to quit.

Sources:
“Gamma-tocopherol supplementation boosts smoking cessation benefits” Life Extension Foundation newsletter, 5/3/13, lef.org