Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
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Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#2Effect size... around 5% improvement in the FSIQ score. Not very big.
Although the dose of 800 IU/day was small.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#3This is specifically for older adults, not a general result.
Still seems promising, though.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#4Effect size... around 5% improvement in the FSIQ score. Not very big. Although the dose of 800 IU/day was small.
Thanks for the summary! On the other hand, I'd take a 5% bump basically for free.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#5It's worth noting that vitamin D has a lot of high-confidence but low-effect results going for it, including a lot of strong meta-analysis over many health outcomes. What I mean by this is that it usually seems to conclusively either do something beneficial, but minor, almost nothing in the case of many studies, and in the case of some others, something very beneficial (as we've seen a few of in relation to covid recently).
Although Vitamin D isn't a particularly exciting supplement most of the time, that isn't enough of a reason for us to ignore it, as the proper way to make the decision of taking it or not would be to perform a cost/benefit analysis (as we should with any other supplements, lifestyle changes, etc).
The costs of vitamin D are just about as low as any supplement gets, and can be between $0.01 and $0.05 per day. The non-financial costs such as side effects or potential adverse effects are practically non-existent as well. So I do think that even those that have a healthy bit of skepticism over some results should still consider supplementation - there are a lot of potential benefits even if some are minor, and almost no risks or real costs. The optimal way to supplement is to get a blood test before+after starting supplementation in order to be confident you're taking the correct amount, but this isn't required of course. But I think the cost/benefit analysis is clearly in favor, so I didn't hesitate to add Vitamin D to my list of supplements that I take daily (https://nearcyan.com/supplements/ if curious), along with many others at this point.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#6Funny -- I was just digesting a competing study released recently[0] which showed little-to-no benefit from vitamin D, Omega 3 fatty acids, and exercise (either alone or in combinations). That study used 5X the daily vitamin D as this one. So I guess the jury's still out and I may choose to continue to err on the side of supplementing vitamin D.
[0] https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/11/10/Study-Little-bene...
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#7Funny -- I was just digesting a competing study released recently[0] which showed little-to-no benefit from vitamin D, Omega 3 fatty acids, and exercise (either alone or in combinations). That study used 5X the daily vitamin D as this one. So I guess the jury's still out and I may choose to continue to err on the side of supplementing vitamin D. [0] https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/11/10/Study-Little-bene...
Or just get some sunshine! It's likely there are other benefits, besides just the vitamin D.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#8This is specifically for older adults, not a general result. Still seems promising, though.
Moreover:
> Participants were all native Chinese speakers aged 65 years and older with Mild Cognitive Impairment
So - these people were re-acquiring previous cognitive function, not improving their lifetime baseline intelligence.
Quite surprised based on my primitive biology that in a 12 month trial they could observe differences in telomere length. That seems a remarkable outcome and if true would suggest prolonged benefits.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#9Funny -- I was just digesting a competing study released recently[0] which showed little-to-no benefit from vitamin D, Omega 3 fatty acids, and exercise (either alone or in combinations). That study used 5X the daily vitamin D as this one. So I guess the jury's still out and I may choose to continue to err on the side of supplementing vitamin D. [0] https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/11/10/Study-Little-bene...
Or just get some sunshine! It's likely there are other benefits, besides just the vitamin D.
Oddly the study didn't seem to state (from the abstract anyway) if the participants were deficient in vitamin D to start with or not.
Re: Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
#10This is specifically for older adults, not a general result. Still seems promising, though.
Not only that, older adults with mild cognitive impairment. The headline and the paper are quite different.