Enough vitamin D and exercise prevents Alzheimer’s disease....

Today's Post: Monday, 7-12-2010

We’ve known that exercise helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of senility for quite a long time. So the recently announced studies showing that it does are nice extras.

Small wonder that exercise has this protective effect.

It helps ensure good circulation to your brain; slows aging; and grows new brain cells!

And, vigorous exercise, even if brief, several times a week prevents or reduces insulin resistance and too high blood sugar that tends to cause both Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of senility. (Both strength training and interval cardio work particularly if you keep doing a bit more until you exercise quite vigorously each time.)

But, the second finding recently reported is critically important.

Research done in the UK and reported today in the HealthDay online news said that:

People who were severely deficient in vitamin D were 394% -- almost FOUR times more likely to be cognitively impaired while those who were only deficient were 42% more likely to have such impairment.

In the last 50 to 100 years dramatically fewer people spend enough time outside to get sufficient vitamin D from that source. (People used to get a lot of vitamin D from sunlight exposure from being outside, over 10,000 iu a day or more from this source in fact. But very few people are outside that much now.)

Also, until recently, it was thought that 400 iu of vitamin D was enough to ensure good health.

Separate studies have found that the real minimum daily requirement for vitamin D3 is closer to 1700 iu and that the optimum daily intake is closer to 3,000 to 7,500 iu of D3.

Further, many people don’t even take a multivitamin with 400 iu of vitamin D.

That means that hundreds of thousands of people are now severely deficient or deficient in vitamin D.

Given the large impact of this in making senility more likely, the public health importance and the increase in caregiver costs this suggests are already happening, the resulting vitamin D deficiency rate is a bit scary.

For this reason, everyone should at least take a multivitamin with 400 iu of vitamin D and 1,000 or 2,000 iu of vitamin D3 each day.

And, if you want to avoid senility and Alzheimer’s disease yourself, consider doing regular, vigorous exercise each week -- and taking at least 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.