Vitamin D Supplements Do Show Some Preventive Value
Robert Latkany, MDSeptember 20, 2009
Growing up, my mother often told me that I needed to drink my milk so that I could become big and strong and have healthy bones. She may have been right: I 
drank about a gallon of milk a day for years and I am about a foot taller than both my parents. I’ve never broken a bone either, so at least in my case, I guess her advice was right. However, if you’re not a milk fan don’t worry as dairy products may not be the best source of calcium. There are other ways of obtaining calcium in your diet including greens like collards and bok choy, fortified soy milk, baked beans and supplements.
Calcium and vitamin D supplementation is currently a hot topic and deserves more attention. A meta-analysis by Tang et al found that calcium supplementation with or without vitamin D was preventive to some degree against osteoporosis in people over the age of 50. It gets better. A meta-analysis by Autier and colleague determined that Vitamin D supplementation was associated with lower overall mortality rates. But before you get too excited about the calcium and vitamin D combination, they did not reduce the risk of breast cancer Chlebowski et al in post-menopausal women, nor did they reduce the risk of colorectal cancer according to Wactawski-Wende et al.
And in a study by Margolis et al, the combination of Vitamin D and calcium did not lower the risk of developing high blood pressure in healthy postmenopausal women. The combination of calcium and vitamin D supplementation also does not reduce the likelihood of developing diabetes according to de Boer et al.
Although the combination of Vitamin D and calcium is no panacea, I still tell my kids that if they want to touch the ceiling like me when they grow up, they have to drink their milk.
Please read our legal disclaimer.
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.
Bookmark with:
What are these?