While folic acid’s greatest strength is in reducing the risk of children developing Neural Tube Defects in the womb, more benefits of Vitamin B-9 continue to be discovered.
Studies also find that taking folic acid supplements can reduce a person’s risk of heart disease and stroke by as much as 20%.
Recent discoveries show that folic acid could be beneficial to women with type 2 diabetes.
According to a trial reported in the August 2017 issue of Nutrition Research and Practice (link: https://e-nrp.org), taking folic acid resulted in improvement in homocysteine and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels in postmenopausal women with type-2 diabetes. Having high levels of homocysteine is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
“Folic acid supplementation may improve the cardiovascular health of postmenopausal women with diabetes,” authors Aswathy Vijayakumar of Ewha Woman’s University and colleagues remark in their introduction. “In particular, folic acid supplementation has been shown to reduce homocysteine levels and improve vascular health in different study populations.”
Whether or not you’re planning on becoming pregnant, adding the recommended 400 mcg of folic acid to your daily regimen can have many benefits. For more information on the various benefits of folic acid, check out the “age groups” section of our site.
