Category: Nutrition

This plant-based nutrient may help protect against disability and disease into old age.

Dietary fibre consumed from fruits, cereals and breads is linked to aging successfully over many years.

The surprising benefits of fibre-rich foods have been underestimated, but Australian researchers reveal that fibre makes a big difference to successful aging.

They studied 1,609 adults who were 49 years and older for 10 years to find out the relationship between healthy aging and carbohydrate nutrition.

Total carbohydrate intake, total fibre intake, sugar intake, glycaemic load and glycaemic index factors were examined.

Fibre had the largest impact on what the researchers called ‘successful aging.’

Successful aging was defined as the absence of:

• cognitive impairment,
• disability,
• depressive symptoms,
• respiratory symptoms,
• and chronic diseases including coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.

Professor Bamini Gopinath, the study’s lead author, said:

“Out of all the variables that we looked at, fiber intake — which is a type of carbohydrate that the body can’t digest — had the strongest influence.

Essentially, we found that those who had the highest intake of fiber or total fiber actually had an almost 80 percent greater likelihood of living a long and healthy life over a 10-year follow-up.

That is, they were less likely to suffer from hypertension, diabetes, dementia, depression, and functional disability.”

We might expect that sugar intake would have a big impact on healthy aging, but in this study it was not linked to aging well.

Professor Gopinath pointed out that the older adults who participated in this study had a low intake of carbonated and sugary drinks in their diet.

The study was published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A (Gopinath et al., 2016).

It is estimated that up to 70 percent of people could have a vitamin D deficiency.

Depression and pain can both be signs of vitamin D deficiency.

As well as low mood, the most important symptoms of depression are:

1. Decreased interest in life.
2. Energy loss.
3. Concentration problems.

People in the study reported pains such as:

• Neuropathic pain, including shooting or burning sensations in their legs and feet (61 percent).
• Sensory pain such as numbness and tingling in their hands, fingers and legs (74 percent).

Both depression and pain were reduced after participants were given vitamin D2 supplementation.

Some studies estimate that up to 70 percent of people could have a vitamin D deficiency.

The study, which lasted six months, included women with type 2 diabetes.

Dr Todd Doyle, the study’s first author, said:

“Pain is a common and often serious problem for women with type 2 diabetes and depression.

While further research is needed, D2 supplementation is a promising treatment for both pain and depression in type 2 diabetes.”

Foods that are rich in vitamin D include oily fish and eggs, but most people get their vitamin D from the action of sunlight on the skin.

That is why levels are typically lower in the body through the winter months in more Northern climes.

Professor Sue Penckofer said:

“Vitamin D has widespread benefits for our health and certain chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.”

Other disease linked to vitamin D deficiency include cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

The study was presented at a research conference at Loyola University Chicago’s Health Sciences Campus (Doyle 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).