Many people automatically associate Vitamin D with cow’s milk. That’s because this nutrient is often added to dairy products.
There’s good reason for doing so.
In the human body, Vitamin D helps put calcium into the bloodstream.
Calcium is critical for building and maintaining strong bones.
So if a person isn’t getting enough Vitamin D, their skeleton can become calcium-starved and prone to fracture.
Older people commonly suffer Vitamin D deficiency. And fractures are a major health hazard for seniors.
So can Vitamin D supplements help alleviate this problem?
A review article published recently in the British Medical Journal examined the issue.
In the article, researchers analyzed seven previous studies involving a total of almost seventy-thousand men and women, age forty-seven and up.
Some of the studies dealt with Vitamin D taken alone. Others also involved calcium supplements, too.
The studies also included control groups that didn’t take supplements.
Altogether, about seventy-two-hundred fractures occurred during the study period.
The results showed that Vitamin D alone wasn’t any help. Daily doses of ten or twenty micrograms failed to reduce the risk of fractures.
But Vitamin D plus calcium was a different story.
In two studies, ten micrograms of the vitamin taken daily with one-thousand milligrams of calcium reduced hip fractures an average of twenty-five percent.
The studies also showed that this protective effect applied regardless of age, gender or previous history of fractures.
So if you’re concerned with bone health, take heed.
The team of Vitamin D plus calcium could be exactly what you need to associate with, to fight fractures.