Vitamin D - Magic Medicine for Intelligence and Other Concerns?

With all of the countless supplements available on the market, it can be difficult to keep up with which ones do what.  Often, many supplements will be hailed as 'all-in-one' magic pills, promising to cure all of your ills in one convenient package.  While most of these claims are false or based on anecdotal evidence, there are certain vitamins and minerals that can provide a wide variety of benefits - and are scientifically proven to do so.  According to the latest edition of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, one such supplement may be Vitamin D.

Unfortunately, Vitamin D can be very difficult to come by.  There aren't many foods that are rich in Vitamin D, although it is found in small amounts in the flesh of fish, beef liver, egg yolks and milk.  However, Vitamin D can also be absorbed from sunlight, which is good news as summer rolls around.  Additionally, there are Vitamin D supplements available nearly everywhere vitamins and minerals are sold, and Vitamin D is included in most multivitamins.

So why is Vitamin D so important?  Because it promises a lot, and backs everything up.  In a recent study of men aged 40 to 79 years old, scientists compared the effects of Vitamin D on test performance.  After logging the results of the more than 3,000 test subjects, the researchers found that higher levels of Vitamin D corresponded to higher scores on tests of cognitive ability.  Additional analysis indicated that the most significant correlation was present in men aged 60 and over, suggesting that Vitamin D could help to fight the effects of age-related loss of cognitive function (1).

These findings only indicate one of the many research-backed benefits of Vitamin D, though.  Because Vitamin D is related to the absorption of calcium, a lack of Vitamin D can lead to stunted skeletal development in children as well as osteoporosis in adults (2).  Additionally, Vitamin D is believed to play a role in the prevention of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes and glucose intolerance (3,4,5).  As the obesity epidemic continues to grow in America and around the world, conditions such as diabetes and glucose intolerance are becoming a more significant concern.  But if the results of studies on Vitamin D can be replicated in the real world, it may prove to be an effective weapon in the fight against such conditions.

So while there may be no true "magic pill," Vitamin D has a variety of uses that make it more than worthy of your attention.


SOURCES:

1. Association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and cognitive performance in middle-aged and older European men. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 2009 May 21.

2. Parfitt AM. Osteomalacia and related disorders. In: Avioli LV, Krane SM, eds. Metabolic bone disease and clinically related disorders. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: WB Saunders, 1990:329-96.

3. Hyppönen E, Läärä E, Reunanen A, Järvelin MR, Virtanen SM. Intake of vitamin D and risk of type 1 diabetes: a birth-cohort study. Lancet 2001;358:1500-3.