| ■ Vitamin D May Help Maintain Seniors' Brain Health | 2009.01.27 |
| Vitamin D may help fight age-related mental decline, according to a study that included 2,000 people aged 65 and older. Those with the lowest vitamin D levels were more than twice as likely to have cognitive problems than those with the highest levels of the vitamin, BBC News reported. People with impaired cognitive function are more likely to develop dementia, noted the U.K. and U.S. authors of the study, which will be published in the Journal of Geriatric Psychology and Neurology. Sources of vitamin D include fish and exposure to sunlight. But older people absorb less vitamin D from sunlight than younger people, said study co-author Dr. Iain Lang, of the Peninsula Medical School in the United Kingdom, BBC News reported. "One way to address this might be to provide older adults with vitamin D supplements," Lang said. "This has been proposed in the past as a way of improving bone health in older people, but our results suggest it might also have other benefits." |