Women, if you are consuming vitamin D every day, assuming it’ll keep you away from osteoporosis, think again!
As per researchers vitamin D solely is not responsible for improving the bone strength. Calcium is equally important nutrients for fighting osteoporosis, as a matter of fact, calcium and vitamin D go hand in hand. If calcium is the basic element and building block for bone then vitamin D is the element that allows bones to absorb calcium.
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is a disorder in which the bones become fragile due to decrease in bone minerals and subsequently increasing the potential chances of bone fracture. In short, a person suffering from osteoporosis is more susceptible of fracturing a bone than a normal healthy person of same age and in same condition.
Osteoporosis develops when the body is not able to absorb required amount of calcium from our body. To maintain the desired level of calcium in blood the parathyroid glands start secreting parathyroid hormones (PTH) which extracts calcium from bones. Vitamin D is said to help the body in absorbing the required calcium in the blood stream and thus reducing the risk of osteoporosis i.e. calcium depletion from the bones.
Most fracture prone areas being the wrist, vertebrae column, hip and neck. It has been widely witnessed that women are at higher risk of getting affected with the disease than men at a ratio of 2:1.
Treatment for osteoporosis are said to be primarily a good balanced diet, exercise, medication and taking vitamin D supplements. However, direct impact of vitamin D supplement in relation to prevention of the disease is still under scrutiny.
Vitamin D Myth
As per one recent article published in the Lancet, researcher says vitamin D has no role to play in the prevention of the disease. The research included over 4,000 healthy people with an average age of 59. The study conducted 23 tests on problem prone areas (as wrist, vertebrae, hip and neck) to measure the outcome of vitamin D on bone mineral density.
The participants were given vitamin D and calcium (though in some cases) potion varying from 500 – 800 or more unit a day. After careful analysis of data retrieved from the test conducted, surprisingly no remarkable increase in the bone density was found for the areas under study. This suggests, the role of vitamin D in bone mineralization could be a myth.
However, currently, another study says the benefits of vitamin D can be strengthen when combined with another important vitamin named as vitamin K. It is found that the vitamin K directs the calcium absorbed to be deposited at the right place i.e bones and not to any other organ or arteries and causing any other disorder like atherosclerosis.
Osteoporosis is still under research and is not fully understood due to its complexity and so there are different opinions about the role of vitamin D and other cure or preventive method devised so far.
Source: Dailymail
