Children & Women
Vitamin D may help prevent falls in elderly women
By David Liu, Ph.D.
Jan 16, 2008 - 10:23:25 PM

THURSDAY Jan 17, 2008 (Foodconsumer.org) -- Taking vitamin D supplements may help reduce the risk of falls among high risk elderly women, according to an Australian study published in the Jan. 14 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

In the study, Dr. Richard L. Prince, of the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Nedlands, Australia, and colleagues found those who took vitamin D2 supplements along with calcium citrate reduced their risk of falls by 19 percent.

The study involved 302 women age 70 to 90, who had a history of falling in the previous year.  The vitamin D level in the subjects was below the median for the area or 24 nanograms per milliliter.

Participants were assigned vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) or a placebo.  All subjects were also given 1,000 milligrams of calcium citrate per day.

Among the study group, 53 percent of participants had at least a fall compared to 62.9 percent in the control group.  This means use of vitamin D reduced the risk of having at least one fall by 19 percent.

During the winder and spring, taking vitamin D supplements, participants reduced the risk level of falls by 23 percent to the level for the summer and autumn when abundant sunshine led to high levels of vitamin D in the subjects.
 
However, this effect was not found in those who had more than one fall.  The researchers speculated that those who had multiple falls may have other risk factors.  Taking vitamin D supplements alone did not seem enough for those people to prevent falls.

At least early study has already found that elderly people who took 800 IUs per day reduced their risk of falls by 70 percent.  That study was published in Feb. 2007 in published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.  

Vitamin D is naturally produced in the body when the skin is exposed to sunshine.  Exposure of the face and both hands for 20 minutes to strong sunshine will generate enough vitamin D.

Vitamin D, which has also been found to provide many other benefits such as cancer prevention in addition to the bone health, can also be obtained by taking fish liver oil.  Vitamin D often in form of D2, an inferior form of the vitamin, is also added to certain foods.

Those who want to take vitamin D supplements should make sure that they take more than 1,000 International Units of vitamin D3 instead of vitamin D2, according to a foodconsumer.org scientist.   Up to 10,000 IUs per day is considered safe for healthy people.