Category: Nutrition

Brain shrinkage was six times more likely in those with low levels of this vitamin.

Vitamin B12 may protect against brain shrinkage with age, research finds.

People with higher vitamin B12 levels were six times less likely to suffer brain shrinkage.

Vitamin B12 levels can be boosted through supplementation or by eating foods such as dairy, liver, salmon and eggs.

Fortified breakfast cereals also contain vitamin B12.

Around one-in-four people may have a vitamin B12 deficiency — however none of the people in the study were deficient.

People who may have difficult getting enough vitamin B12 include vegetarians, older people and those with some digestive disorders, such as Crohn’s disease.

The study included 107 older people who had brain scans, memory testing and their blood levels were checked for vitamin B12 levels.

Dr Anna Vogiatzoglou, the study’s first author, said:

“Many factors that affect brain health are thought to be out of our control, but this study suggests that simply adjusting our diets to consume more vitamin B12 through eating meat, fish, fortified cereals or milk may be something we can easily adjust to prevent brain shrinkage and so perhaps save our memory.

Research shows that vitamin B12 deficiency is a public health problem, especially among the elderly, so more vitamin B12 intake could help reverse this problem.

Without carrying out a clinical trial, we acknowledge that it is still not known whether B12 supplementation would actually make a difference in elderly persons at risk for brain shrinkage.”

Vitamin B12 is involved in the production of red blood cells.

A deficiency — which is more frequent in those over 60 — can cause anemia, which is a lack of red blood cells.

Dr Vogiatzoglou continued:

“Previous research on the vitamin has had mixed results and few studies have been done specifically with brain scans in elderly populations.

We tested for vitamin B12 levels in a unique, more accurate way by looking at two certain markers for it in the blood.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Vogiatzoglou, et al., 2008).

Vitamin D supplementation could lower the risk of dying from cancer-related diseases and increase life expectancy by years.

Tiredness and weak muscles can be signs of vitamin D deficiency, as can headaches and poor sleep.

Taking vitamin D can reduce cancer mortality rates by 13 percent with 30,000 fewer cancer-related deaths each year, according to a German study.

Based on their national data on cancer mortality in 2016, vitamin D supplementation could significantly lower cancer deaths in adults over age 50.

They say if all these middle-aged Germans took vitamin D, nearly 30,000 premature deaths from cancer could be prevented and 300,000 years of life could be saved.

In recent years scientists have been looking into the effect of vitamin D on several conditions such as diabetes, inflammatory diseases, cancer, and respiratory illnesses.

Reviews of large clinical trials show that vitamin D supplementation is linked to a 13 percent reduction in the cancer death rate.

Dr Hermann Brenner, the study’s co-author, said:

“In many countries around the world, the age-adjusted rate of cancer mortality has fortunately declined over the past decade.

However, given the often considerable costs of many new cancer drugs, this success has often come at a high price.

Vitamin D, on the other hand, is comparatively inexpensive in the usual daily doses.”

Older people are commonly found to have vitamin D deficiency, particularly those with cancer.

In 2016, the number of people over-50 in Germany was about 36 million.

The research team calculated that the treatment cost of vitamin D supplementation at a 1,000 international units daily dose would cost 25 euros per person a year.

Considering its health benefits, the cost for the health care system would be practically nothing after all.

Dr Brenner, said:

“In view of the potentially significant positive effects on cancer mortality — additionally combined with a possible cost saving — we should look for new ways to reduce the widespread vitamin D deficiency in the elderly population in Germany.

In some countries, foods have even been enriched with vitamin D for many years — for example, in Finland, where cancer mortality rates are about 20 percent lower than in Germany.

Not to mention that there is mounting evidence of other positive health effects of adequate vitamin D supply, such as in lung disease mortality rates.

Finally, we consider vitamin D supplementation so safe that we even recommend it for newborn babies to develop healthy bones.”

We can all improve our vitamin D levels at no cost by exposure to sunlight everyday.

The German Cancer Research Centre recommends three times a week for at least 12 minutes outside in the sun.

During this period of time the face, hands, arms and legs should be left uncovered without wearing sunscreen.

The study was published in the journal Molecular Oncology (Niedermaier et al., 2021).

Eat up! They preserve your memory and thinking skills.

One daily serving of leafy green vegetables could preserve memory and thinking skills, research shows.

Older adults who ate at least one serving of these veggies were the equivalent of 11 years younger cognitively.

This was compared to those that ate few leafy green vegetables.

Dr Martha Clare Morris, the nutritional epidemiologist who led the study, said:

“Adding a daily serving of green leafy vegetables to your diet may be a simple way to help promote brain health.

There continues to be sharp increases in the percentage of people with dementia as the oldest age groups continue to grow in number.

Effective strategies to prevent dementia are critically needed.”

The study followed 960 people with an average age of 81, none of whom had dementia.

Their memory and thinking skills were tested once a year for around 5 years.

Each person reported how often they ate greens, including salad and lettuce.

When they were followed up, the results showed that the more leafy greens they ate, the better their cognitive health.

Dr Morris said:

“The study results do not prove that eating green, leafy vegetables slows brain aging, but it does show an association

The study cannot rule out other possible reasons for the link.

Because the study focused on older adults with the majority of participants being white, the results may not apply to younger adults and to people of color.

The results need to be confirmed by other investigators in different populations and through randomized trials to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the eating leafy greens and reductions in the incidence of cognitive decline.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Morris et al., 2017).

Around one-in-four people may have a vitamin B12 deficiency.

Pale skin or skin with a slight yellow tinge can be a sign of vitamin B12 deficiency.

The body uses vitamin B12 to make red blood cells and to keep the nervous system healthy.

Without enough B12 the blood cells produced are too large and cannot move into the bloodstream, leading to pale skin.

Around one-quarter of people may have a vitamin B12 deficiency.

Other, more common signs of vitamin B12 deficiency include feeling tired, experiencing muscle weakness and being constipated.

People experiencing a mood disorder, like depression, can also be deficient in vitamin B12.

People who may have difficulty getting enough vitamin B12 include vegetarians, older people and those with some digestive disorders, such as Crohn’s disease.

Some medications, such as those to treat ulcers and excessive stomach acid, are also linked to vitamin B12 deficiency.

One study of 25,956 patients diagnosed with a vitamin B12 deficiency found that the condition was linked to taking anti-acid medications.

The study’s authors write:

“Vitamin B12 deficiency is relatively common, especially among older adults; it has potentially serious medical complications if undiagnosed.

Left untreated, vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to dementia, neurologic damage, anemia, and other complications, which may be irreversible.”

Vitamin B12 deficiency is easy to rectify with supplements or by dietary changes.

Vitamin B12 levels can be boosted through supplementation or by eating foods such as dairy, liver, salmon and eggs.

Other good sources of vitamin B12 include poultry and low-fat milk.

Fortified breakfast cereals also contain vitamin B12.

The study was published in JAMA (Lam et al., 2013).

Over 1 billion people worldwide have a vitamin D deficiency.

Difficulties with memory and learning are signs of vitamin D deficiency, research finds.

Vitamin D deficiency is even linked to disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

Deficiency in the vitamin affects critical structures in the hippocampus, an area of the brain important in memory and learning.

Dr Thomas Burne, study co-author, said:

“Over a billion people worldwide are affected by vitamin D deficiency, and there is a well-established link between vitamin D deficiency and impaired cognition.

Unfortunately, exactly how vitamin D influences brain structure and function is not well understood, so it has remained unclear why deficiency causes problems.”

For the study, researchers removed vitamin D from the diets of mice for 20 weeks.

The mice clearly showed problems with learning and memory compared to a control group, who were fed sufficient levels of vitamin D.

The researchers found that vitamin D is important in keeping perineuronal nets in the hippocampus stable.

Dr Burne explained:

“These nets form a strong, supportive mesh around certain neurons, and in doing so they stabilise the contacts these cells make with other neurons.

As neurons in the hippocampus lose their supportive perineuronal nets, they have trouble maintaining connections, and this ultimately leads to a loss of cognitive function.”

The hippocampus is a particularly active part of the brain, which may be why it is affected by vitamin D deficiency early on, said Dr Burne:

“It’s like the canary in the coalmine—it might fail first because its high energy requirement makes it more sensitive to the depletion of essential nutrients like vitamin D.

Intriguingly, the right side of the hippocampus was more affected by vitamin D deficiency than the left side.”

The damage to these perineuronal nets may help to explain the memory problems that are a symptom of schizophrenia.

Dr Burne said:

“The next step is to test this new hypothesis on the link between vitamin D deficiency, perineuronal nets and cognition.

We are also particularly excited to have discovered these nets can change in adult mice.

I’m hoping that because they’re dynamic there is a chance that we can rebuild them, and that could set the stage for new treatments.”

The study was published in the journal Brain Structure and Function (Al-Amin et al., 2019).

How do people rate the quality of their diet and are they accurate?

Most people overrate their diet quality and sometimes they believe what they eat is very healthy, despite the reverse being true.

When American adults were asked about how healthy their diet was, three-quarters were too optimistic, a study reveals.

Dr Jessica Thomson, the study’s first author, said:

“We found that only a small percentage of U.S. adults can accurately assess the healthfulness of their diet, and interestingly, it’s mostly those who perceive their diet as poor who are able to accurately assess their diet.

Additionally, most adults overrate the quality of their diet, sometimes to a substantial degree.”

The research team wanted to know if a simple but effective question could be introduced as an assessment tool to complement or replace the food frequency questionnaires in nutritional studies.

Self-rated health is a single question like “how would you rate your general health? Excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?”.

It is well known that self-rated health is a good predictor of diseases, illnesses and death.

But it is not clear if self-rated diet could foresee how good people’s diet is.

85% were incorrect

The team analysed data from 9,700 American adults in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

They found that 85 percent of participants scored their diet quality incorrectly.

About 75 percent considered their diet healthier than it was and 63 percent rated their diet quality as “very good”.

Only 15 percent of adults were accurate — surprisingly it was those who had rated their diet quality as “poor”.

Women, adults with lower income, and those with lower education were more likely to value their diet quality correctly.

Dr Thomson said:

“It’s difficult for us to say whether U.S. adults lack an accurate understanding of the components of a healthful versus unhealthful diet or whether adults perceive the healthfulness of their diet as they wish it to be — that is, higher in quality than it actually is.

Until we have a better understanding of what individuals consider when assessing the healthfulness of their diet, it will be difficult to determine what knowledge and skills are necessary to improve self-assessment or perception of one’s diet quality.”

Related

• What you eat has a bigger impact on your health than any powerful drug.
• The Green Med diet leads to more weight loss and improves heart health.
• People fed a healthier diet from an early age have a higher IQ.
• Women’s mental health is more sensitive to what they eat than men’s.

The study was published in the American Journal of Health Promotion (Thomson et al., 2022).

Around one-quarter of people may have a vitamin B12 deficiency.

Memory and thinking problems can be a sign of vitamin B12 deficiency, research finds.

Similarly, people experiencing a mood disorder, like depression, can also be deficient in vitamin B12.

The body uses vitamin B12 to make red blood cells and to keep the nervous system healthy.

Around one-quarter of people may have a vitamin B12 deficiency

Other, more common signs of vitamin B12 deficiency include feeling tired, experiencing muscle weakness and being constipated.

Memory and thinking problems can strike from an early age.

One study of Colombian children found that children deficient in vitamin B12 were at more than twice the risk of repeating a grade.

Deficient children were also almost twice as likely to be absent from school as those who were not.

The study included 3,156 students aged 5-12 who were attending primary schools in Bogotá, Colombia.

They were tested for a range of nutritional markers, including B12, folate, zinc and vitamin A.

The results showed that 15 percent were marginally deficient in vitamin B12.

Only a deficiency in vitamin B12 was linked to a child having to repeat a grade.

Dr Eduardo Villamor, who led the study, said:

“Vitamin B12 is necessary for adequate brain development.

Deficiency very early in life or in old age has been linked to cognitive and behavioral problems, but it was not known whether it could be related to academic difficulties during school age.

Grade repetition and school absenteeism are important outcomes because they predict school dropout and impair children’s options for educational advancement and development.”

Vitamin B12 deficiency is easy to rectify with supplements or by dietary changes.

Vitamin B12 levels can be boosted through supplementation or by eating foods such as dairy, liver, salmon and eggs.

The study was published in The Journal of Nutrition (Duong et al., 2015).

Live a decade longer and be free from chronic illnesses by following 8 heart healthy metrics.

Paying attention to 8 cardiovascular health factors will considerably increase life expectancy, research suggests.

In this study, adults with higher scores for 8 cardiovascular health metrics lived nearly a decade longer than those who scored poorly.

The metric is known as Life’s Essential 8 and has been developed by the American Heart Association.

It is based on a scoring system which measures a set of health factors and lifestyle behaviours.

To estimate people’s life expectancy, the research team assessed cardiovascular health levels based on the Life’s Essential 8 score, which consists of:

1. a healthy diet,
2. physical activity,
3. not smoking,
4. correct sleep duration,
5. maintaining a healthy weight,
6. controlling cholesterol,
7. healthy blood glucose,
8. and healthy blood pressure.

Another study previously suggested that people who committed to these metrics lived longer and were more healthy.

According to the study’s senior author, Professor Lu Qi, the findings indicate:

“That you can modify your lifestyle to live longer.”

More than 23,000 adults participated in this study with an eight-year follow up.

The scoring system ranged from zero to 100 points, from low as below 50, moderate as 50 to 79, and high as 80 or higher.

Compared to adults who scored lowest, those who scored 80 or higher, at age 50 had a life expectancy of nine more years.

Smoking, sleep, blood glucose levels, and physical activity appeared to be the most important life expectancy factors.

Non-smokers lived 7.4 years longer than those who were heavy smokers.

Participants who slept between seven to nine hours a night lived five more years compared to those with either not enough or too much sleep.

Higher score for maintaining blood glucose levels showed a life expectancy of 4.9 more years.

A life expectancy of 4.6 more years was seen in people with higher physical activity than those with the least.

Professor Nathan Wong, a cardiovascular epidemiologist, commenting on this study, said:

“Information on psychosocial factors such as stress and depression, as well as on social determinants of health such as access to health care, may also play an important role and modify the impact that the key cardiovascular health metrics have on cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular outcomes.

As the study looked exclusively at mortality, effects on non-fatal cardiovascular outcomes should also be examined, given their substantial impact on health care utilization.”

Related

• People who share more of their resources with others enjoy higher life expectancy.
• Foods rich in Alpha linolenic acid (ALA) have been found to improve life expectancy.
• Walking 5.6 km or 3 miles a day lowers the risk of death by about two-thirds in adults.
• Avoiding sugar-rich diets will increase human lifespan by many years.

The study was published in the journal Circulation (Ma et al., 2023).