Is L-Arginine Bad To Take After Heart Attacks?

Reposted from another forum...


I'm not one to defend a particular product and for the record I've never tried Solstic cardio, but i just hate bad science. So let me explain the study that showed arginine was "bad" for heart attacks. I say study not studies because only one study ever showed any negative effects from l-arginine.

Now i'm also not going to say l-arginine is the end all be all for heart disease. It is a non-essential amino acid and the vast majority of people don't need to take it as a supplement, their body makes it. But i do hate bad science and even worse unethical reporting.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins enrolled 153 patients who had just had an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack; MI) and put half of them on L-arginine (non-sustained-release; 500 mg per capsule) and half on placebo. They started at 3 grams daily and increased the dose to 9
grams daily. Their goal was to measure blood vessel and heart function, while also watching the patients for other outcomes (another MI, etc.) for six months. They were still recruiting more participants for the study when they decided to discontinue the study, six months after its initiation, because six patients in the L-arginine group died, while none in the placebo group died.

Now on the surface this sounds bad for arginine, but lets look deeper.

Of the six patients taking L-arginine who died:one died after having another MI (not uncommon after an acute MI); two died from "presumed sepsis," meaning they got hospital infections and died; two were "found dead at home"– no cause of death noted; and one died four months after his acute MI and three weeks after stopping Larginine
supplementation; the cause of death was not listed.

Even the researchers admitted this this was due to statistical chance! But that didn't stop JAMA from running it, nor news papers to declaim it.

Whats more the plasma arginine levels of placebo groups and those taking l-arginine were exactly the same, showing that the supplement they were using didn't even ABSORB!

There are plenty of studies showing l-arginine is an effective and safe supplement. 1 poorly done partial study showing it's dangerous. Choose what you want to believe.

-Thomas