You may think that taking selenium supplements could benefit your heart wellness, but according to a systematic review published in The Cochrane Library, not only does current evidence not support selenium for preventing heart disease, but it also shows that taking the supplement could even damage your wellbeing, and increase your chances of developing type 2 diabetes.
When it comes to heart disease risk, diet is a key factor. It is believed that, by protecting against oxidative stress and inflammation, the common food supplement selenium could potentially play a role in preventing heart disease, and so it is often given to improve heart wellness, though there is little evidence that it works. Further, there is much concern that if you have a high selenium status, you are at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, though most evidence in this area is currently limited to healthy American adults.
For the study, the team looked at 12 trials, which amounted to data from 19,715 people. The results were that taking selenium supplements did not lead to any statistically significant difference in the risk of death due to heart disease or any cause, or in the occurrence of heart problems, in comparison to placebos. Side effects of the supplement included alopecia and dermatitis, as well as a small increase in the risk of type 2 diabetes, though this increase was not large enough to be statistically significant.
According to one of the study’s authors Saverio Stranges of Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick in Coventry, ‘The limited evidence available at this time does not support the use of selenium supplements in the primary prevention of heart disease in well-nourished populations. Taking selenium supplements is probably neither beneficial nor harmful, but given the lack of trials to date, we cannot rule out some low level of increased risk of type 2 diabetes, at least in individuals with high selenium status.’
He continued, ‘We need to know what effect selenium supplements have in less well-nourished populations where dietary intake of the element is lower. However, the indiscriminate and widespread use of selenium supplements in individuals and populations with adequate or high selenium status is not justified and should not be encouraged.’
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