Vitamin D Dietary supplements Will not Assist Your Bones, Giant Examine Finds
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, July 28, 2022 (HealthDay Information)
Seniors who take vitamin D dietary supplements to enhance their bone well being and keep off fractures are simply losing their money and time, a significant new examine has discovered.
These dietary supplements did nothing to scale back their common danger of bone fractures, researchers present in a randomized trial testing vitamin D in opposition to a placebo.
“In typically wholesome adults, these outcomes don’t assist using vitamin D dietary supplements to scale back fracture danger,” mentioned lead researcher Dr. Meryl LeBoff, chief of the Calcium and Bone Part at Brigham and Girls’s Hospital in Boston. “We discovered that supplemental vitamin D didn’t cut back fractures in U.S. members.”
Within the examine, revealed July 28 within the New England Journal of Medication, greater than 25,000 older adults have been randomly assigned to take both 2,000 items of vitamin D day by day or a placebo, after which adopted for a median of 5 years. The common age of members was 67.
Practically 2,000 bone fractures occurred amongst greater than 1,500 members throughout the examine interval. Nonetheless, taking vitamin D seems to have had no bearing on who suffered a fracture and who did not.
Practically 20% of U.S. adults presently take vitamin D dietary supplements, researchers mentioned in background notes, typically primarily based on blood exams that discover they’ve “inadequate” or “poor” ranges of vitamin D.
These new outcomes ought to trigger each docs and sufferers to query the worth of routine vitamin D testing, mentioned Dr. Steven Cummings, a professor emeritus on the College of California, San Francisco.
“Docs routinely order vitamin D ranges, and plenty of sufferers hear that they’re low, they’re under some stage,” mentioned Cummings, co-author of an editorial accompanying the findings. “What we would have liked to know is whether or not these individuals who have low ranges profit from taking vitamin D. And the reply to that’s no.”
The medical trial may shake the vitamin D market, which is value greater than $1 billion globally in line with market watchers.
Vitamin D had been thought to assist enhance bone well being as a result of it’s important to your physique’s absorption of calcium, LeBoff mentioned.
“Mechanistically, vitamin D could assist bone well being and enhance mineralization of bone as a result of it will increase the absorption of calcium, and 99% of calcium is saved in bone,” LeBoff mentioned, including that research had additionally proven that the vitamin may have an effect on bone turnover and bone formation.
As well as, some bone illnesses corresponding to rickets have been linked to a extreme vitamin D deficiency in individuals, Cummings famous.
Most individuals get sufficient vitamin D naturally through their pores and skin, which produces it when uncovered to daylight, LeBoff mentioned.
It is also present in vitamin D-supplemented milk, eggs and cereal, as nicely in fish like salmon, trout and tuna, she mentioned.
Cummings believes there is a elementary misunderstanding of vitamin D that is probably driving all this testing for vitamin D deficiency.
His editorial famous that greater than 10 million blood exams for vitamin D ranges are carried out yearly in the USA.
“There is a system in your physique that is saved in stability by vitamin D that you simply absorb, the vitamin D out of your pores and skin and the enzymes that flip it into an energetic type of vitamin D referred to as D125. That system is saved in stability naturally by your physique,” Cummings mentioned.
“I feel what we’re studying is that vitamin D shouldn’t be a vitamin, it is a hormone, and it is arduous to perturb that stability, to alter that stability in a useful approach,” he mentioned.
LeBoff famous that this examine didn’t embrace individuals with osteoporosis, a genetically pushed vitamin D deficiency, or very aged individuals dwelling in residential communities.
QUESTION
Subsequent to purple peppers, you may get essentially the most vitamin C from ________________. See Reply
For individuals in these teams, supplemental vitamin D may very well be useful or important in sustaining their bone well being.
“Do not cease your grandfather’s vitamin D, as a result of these findings actually are present in mid-life and older adults,” LeBoff mentioned.
Extra data
The Mayo Clinic has extra on vitamin D.
SOURCES: Meryl LeBoff, MD, chief, Calcium and Bone Part, Brigham and Girls’s Hospital, Boston; Steven Cummings, MD, professor emeritus, College of California, San Francisco; New England Journal of Medication, July 28, 2022
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