Vitamin D reduced dementia by 40%

hello and welcome to today's talk Monday the 13th of March now I'm looking at a new study today from Canada I just published in March 2023 and it shows that people that take vitamin D supplement get about a 40 protection against dementia now a few weeks ago we looked at people taking Vitamin D supplements get about a 15 to 18 protection against people that have pre-diabetes developing diabetes and that accounts for that applies to about 90 over 90 million people in the United States so a huge difference and here we're seeing that there's a 40 protective effect in this study against developing dementia particularly Alzheimer's disease and people that are likely to get diabetes are likely to get dementia so it just seems to make perfect sense to give these people extra vitamin D now here's this study here so so that the blue line is is a people that had vitamin D and the green line is people that didn't have vitamin D and these are people that survived without getting dementia so we see a clear difference and the study was done over 10 years so we see that people that had uh no vitamin D uh fewer of them survived without developing demand sure so it's an absolutely huge effect from what is essentially an Interventional study so let's look let's look at it now vitamin D supplementation and we'll look at some of these other things in a minute a diagnosis an assessment in disease monitoring Journal peer-reviewed Alzheimer's Society of Canada a published from Alberta now there's been known associations in the past with vitamin D and uh Dementia in other words people with low vitamin D levels are known to be getting more dementia but it wasn't known whether it was a correlation or whether it was causal this shows that it's very likely to be a cause or correlation that giving vitamin D protects against dementia um so the role of supplementation was unclear but this does clarify its perspectives to do and as we say it's longitudinal so it goes on for 10 years now that's a really good study length and we can see the Gap is increasing the protective effect of vitamin D is increasing over the 10-year period um now there was 12 388 patients uh dementia free at the start of the study so pretty good number twelve thousand three hundred and eighty eight from the national Alzheimer's coordinating Center sorted out that in Canada so people that took vitamin D were called D positive and people that didn't take vitamin D were called d uh negative and they wanted to see what the difference was over this longitudinal period and as we noticed as time went on the benefit just seemed to carry on increasing so we've got a benefit there after what that's about after about a year so taking vitamin D for about a year and then the Gap just goes on increasing with fewer and fewer people surviving here without dementia as time goes on the p-value there is very significant P equals 0.0001 so very likely to unlikely to have risen by chance and the average age in entering the study was 71 years so again people that are at risk of diabetes as well as um as well as dementia could benefit from this mild cognitive impairment and depression were both more common in the D negative group compared to the D positive group in other words people taking vitamin D had less mild cognitive impairment and less depression consistent with data that looked at from Ireland a few months ago or last year whenever it was uh the Irish government advising supplementation to improve mood over winter as depression is so common especially in winter time but it's common anyway now they did adjust in this study for age sex education raised cognitive diagnosis depression and this is aliopo protein now this is this is a gene and people that have this Gene it's known are more likely to get dementia so people that are people that are people have one copy of this Gene um if the heterozygous that's about 25 of us people have two copies of this Gene that's about three percent of us are more prone to dementia of course people with two copies of the genome more prone to dementia uh much more prone to dementia um but that they took that into account if you want to know if you have that Gene or not you can get a genetic test for that you can see your doctor and get a genetic test for it if you if you'll do it um if you live in the UK I don't think you've got any chance of getting on the NHS but you can always ask if you wanted to know if you're worried about family history um and they looked at other covariates these are the covariates that here that we're talking about now the results across all formulations now some people are given vitamin D3 some people were given uh D2 and some people were taking d uh 3 Plus calcium um it's not a combination I like particularly but a lot of doctors still give it um probably better to give K2 but that's what's often done so that's what they looked at were people getting D2 I saw D2 D3 or D3 and calcium now vitamin D exposure was associated with significantly longer dementia free periods of time so there's no question that the vitamin D here was working really quite dramatically well to prevent the uh the development of dementia longer survival dementia free time lower dementia incident rate than no exposure so the vitamin D was clearly protecting now Hazard ratio was 0.6 really very very impressive and the researchers were 95 sure it was between 0.55 and 0.65 so like like very very impressive almost half as likely it's it's a 40 reduction dementia exposure was associated with a 40 lower dementia incidence versus no exposure so vitamin D 40 less cases of dementia really the the the authority authorities need to act on this they really do because this is a massive a massive benefit that we are seeing and indeed uh we have been predicting for some time on this channel it has to be said for this and other conditions and I mean the reason for it is we just don't make it in Northern latitudes in Winter nearly all the vitamin D is made from the the skin and we don't get exposed to the sun over winter it's it's pretty obvious really and even in summer we're often working in call centers or working in hospitals or lecturing inside classrooms or sitting inside classrooms where we don't get exposed to the sun anything like as much as we would like so we simply don't make the vitamin D from the sunshine now as I've said this study went on for 10 years so it was a longitudinal study and what they actually found is they presented the results in different ways but over 10 years of follow-up 12 388 people in the study what they found is that starting at the age of Rosetta said the average age of 71 so following up to the average age of 81 years they found that of the 12 388 2696 participants developed at dementia amongst those that developed dementia 2017 that's 74 percent had no exposure to vitamin D so they did not they were the D negative group they didn't have any vitamin D of the patients that did have vitamin D 679 that's 25 percent developed dementia so we see that the vast majority of the people 78 of the people that developed dementia did not have vitamin D 25 of the people that developed dementia did have vitamin D just another way too look at the results but still pretty uh impressive impressive protective effect or just one other way to look at an exposure to vitamin D was associated with significantly High dementia free period five-year survival with no dementia for vitamin D negative people not taking vitamin D only 68.4 survived unscathed without dementia whereas for people taking vitamin D 83.6 survived for five years unscathed by dementia it's a big difference now the effect of vitamin D did vary so vitamin D effect was significantly greater in females versus males so for some reason vitamin D was more protective in women hard to say why is it that women have less exposure outside than men perhaps men have more vitamin D from the sun don't know the study doesn't tell us but uh interesting but quite why that was we don't know but interesting vitamin D effects were significantly greater in people with normal cognition at the start versus people with mild cognitive impairment at the start so people that were normal at the age of 71 when the average age of this study started got even more benefit so people without uh cognitive impairment getting people without cognitive impairment getting more protection from vitamin D again not clear why but that's what the study shows vitamin D effects was significantly greater in this alleopo protein E4 non-carriers versus carriers vitamin D effects were less significant in aliopo protein carriers in other words if people carry this Gene which predisposes them to dementia the vitamin D gives them less benefit if people do not carry this Gene which predisposes to dementia then people get more benefit but only three percent of the population have got two copies of that Gene 25 have got one copy but the people with 25 percent of the 25 of the population with one copy of the gene of course had much less risk than those with two copies of the gene now why vitamin D is not as effective in people that carry this Gene is not clear it could be the need higher doses of Vitamin D because the gene is affecting vitamin D metabolism in some way or it could be that the effects of the gene simply override any benefits from the vitamin D but still for the vast majority for 97 of us who uh don't have two copies of this Gene the protective effects of vitamin D are high the people with this Gene got some protection just not as much so it's still a benefit so to quote the author's vitamin D has potential for dementia prevention especially in higher restrata and the vitamin D deficiency worldwide the prevalence is up to one billion people so if you think about it 40 of that is 400 million people 400 million cases of dementia could be potentially protected we need to be measuring people's vitamin D levels and titrating them up now um my doctor won't measure my vitamin D levels unfortunately so what I'm doing personally I'm taking four thousand international units of a vitamin D a day D3 a day that's what I take four thousand international units of D3 now that equals 100 it's the same as saying 100 micrograms of D3 a day is what I'm taking and I also take a hundred micrograms of vitamin K2 with that so that's what I'm taking a day a hundred of D3 and 100 of K2 because we want the calcium to go into the right places this will put the calcium into the bones instead of into the tissues but 100 micrograms of vitamin D3 is the same as 4 000 international units there's a Pity we measure in two ways but we do that's what I'm taking over winter in the north of England can't tell you what to do I'm not your doctor but that's what I'm taking personally now it's always nice to know there's a mechanism of action as well so for example um Austin Bradford Hill and Richard Dole discovered that smoking caused lung cancer from epidemiological studies it was only after that when people in the laboratory looked and they found out the way that the tire and other chemicals in the cigarettes were having a carcinogenic effect on the uh the the chromosomes in the lung lining so that just reinforces the effect but there are clear mechanisms of action here vitamin D is known to participate in the clearance of this amyloid protein now this amyloid protein actually starts uh plugging the brain up unfortunately so um if if we think if we think about a brain that's that's a um so our brain's kind of like a box a boxing glove isn't it there's there's a brain very vaguely um so um this amyloid protein will start clogging the uh clogging the brain up like that and that's one of the whole marks of Alzheimer's disease so the vitamin D helps the clearance it takes its amyloid protein out of the brain which is good and may provide neural protection against uh a beta-induced Tau uh hyper phosphorylation don't worry about the big words um what this is if you think about the smaller scale if we think about the nerve cells in the brain connected by fibers uh like like this all over the brain 100 000 million nerve cells in the brain then these uh these this Tau protein what the Tau does is the towel forms these uh neurofibril Tangles so you get these little tangly bits here uh which is one of the characteristics so they're the kind of Pathologists that we get these uh Tau neurofiable Tangles and we get these amyloid deposits and um it's plausible that the vitamin D prevents both of those that's D3 maybe more protective than uh ego Ergo calciferol which is D2 so it looks like D3 is the one uh to take which is the one that's made in the skin uh normally of course so pretty impressive protection there against um dementia this really does need to be to be done this is cheap it's natural it doesn't cost anything um we're not paying thousands of dollars per year to a pharmaceutical company vitamin D uh at the moment my tubs of vitamin D these are currently I think 150 one pound fifty pence from local supermarkets which is under two dollars um so that's the way to go clever pharmaceutical interventions aren't necessary we just need to compensate for our uh Sun avoiding Lifestyles because of course human beings it's worth originally a tropical where vitamin D from the Sun wasn't a problem now I just want to finish with a clip from um our community health project in in Uganda uh we're in the process of uh giving out um large amounts of mosquito Nets so far we've bought one and a half thousand mosquito Nets we're trying to collect data to look at the efficacy of this so we can roll this out as a model in other parts of the country we know it's going to prevent malaria but we're trying to prove it as we go along but so far we've given 1 500 mosquito Nets out partly due to um this Channel and partly due to your um buy me a coffee money which I'll put a link before below if anyone wants to contribute to that but let's look at the mosquito net distribution in uh in Uganda here no okay I mean so there we are that was uh mosquito distribution I don't know what that lady was saying about her teeth but she was certainly pleased to have been being bitten by mosquitoes for the last 60 or 65 years or whatever it wasn't I'm sure she's very pleased not to so as part from as well as other things we're giving out these one and a half thousand mosquito Nets we'll try and collect the data and see how many cases of malaria or another insect diseases uh that prevents so this is what Healthcare is all about of course it's helping individuals and I'll put the link if you want to see more from that work in Uganda uh on on the description but for now thank you for watching and try and encourage all our health authorities to test everyone's vitamin D level to titrated up to the right amount preventing pre-diabetics becoming diabetic preventing non-demented people becoming dementing this is a complete no-brainer that we should be doing now but unfortunately we are not um let's hope it's not because we can't make any money out of vitamin D let's hope that's not the reason so that's what we need to start doing uh thank you for watching

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 485,678

Keywords: physiology, nursing, NCLEX, health, disease, biology, medicine, nurse education, medical education, pathophysiology, campbell, human biology, human body

Id: -U4CD1uKnZA

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 13 2023