The sun is the main source of vitamin D, exposure to healthy sunshine could avert dementia and stroke. This was found by scientists who have been able to establish a direct link between vitamin D and the conditions in a world-first study made.
A new study was made and this was based on what British people said. They believe that dementia cases could possibly drop by nearly a fifth if those who were deficient in the vitamin included supplements so that their levels will once again climb to healthy numbers.
Vitamin D is also known as the sunshine vitamin because the human skin starts producing it when it is exposed to light. The team from the University of South Australia studied almost 300,000 people from the UK Biobank. They looked into the effects of low levels of vitamin D and the chances of suffering from dementia and stroke.
They saw how low levels of vitamin D were linked to lower brain volumes. This also brought about a higher risk of suffering from dementia and stroke. They also performed more genetic analyses and the findings supported a causal effect of vitamin D deficiency to the mentioned diseases.
The researchers claimed how in some populations, as high as 17 percent of dementia cases could have been avoided if they simply upped their vitamin D levels to a healthy range. This is rather important because dementia is known to be one of the many major causes of disability and dependency, especially among the older population. The numbers include everyone worldwide and those who suffer from it know how this affects your thinking and behavior as you get older.
On a global scale, more than 55 million people suffer from dementia. In fact, a whopping 10 million new cases are diagnosed on a yearly basis. Sadly, there is no cure for this. What doctors can help the patients with are on preventative behaviors. Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia also impact more than 920,000 people in the UK. The number will go up to two million in the next three decades, which has been a cause for concern.
Study author Professor Elina Hyppönen, Senior investigator and Director of UniSA’s Australian Centre for Precision Health, has spoken about the findings and said that Vitamin D is extremely crucial when it comes to preventing dementia. Hence, doctors need to abolish problems regarding vitamin D deficiency.
“In this UK population we observed that up to 17 per cent of dementia cases might have been avoided by boosting vitamin D levels to be within a normal range,” she said.
“Our study is the first to examine the effect of very low levels of vitamin D on the risks of dementia and stroke, using robust genetic analyses among a large population. Vitamin D is a hormone precursor that is increasingly recognized for widespread effects, including on brain health, but until now it has been very difficult to examine what would happen if we were able to prevent vitamin D deficiency,” she added.
“In some contexts, where vitamin D deficiency is relatively common, our findings have important implications for dementia risks. Dementia is a progressive and debilitating disease that can devastate individuals and families alike.”
“If we’re able to change this reality through ensuring that none of us is severely vitamin D deficient, it would also have further benefits and we could change the health and wellbeing for thousands. Most of us are likely to be ok, but for anyone who for whatever reason may not receive enough vitamin D from the sun, modifications to diet may not be enough, and supplementation may well be needed,” Prof. Hyppönen also said.
The genetic study had studied data that came from a total of 294,514 participants from the UK Biobank. They looked into the effects of low levels of vitamin D (25 nmol/L) and the risk of dementia and stroke.
Nonlinear Mendelian randomization (MR), which is a method of using measured variation in genes to study the causal effect of a modifiable exposure on disease, was used to for the test in order to find the underlying causality for neuroimaging outcomes, dementia, and stroke.
The study has been published and made available in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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