Are vitamin D pills not effective? [카드뉴스]

“Vitamin D pills can protect bones from fractures. You need vitamins to absorb the calcium you need to keep your bones healthy.” This idea has been taken as an unquestioning truth. However, according to the New York Times, a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that vitamin D pills did nothing to prevent fractures.

Further, the journal advises the millions of Americans who take vitamin D supplements and the laboratories that do more than 10 million vitamin D tests each year: “Stop it.” “We should stop testing vitamin D levels or recommending vitamin D supplements to prevent disease or prolong life,” said the doctors who conducted the study.

They conducted the study on a total of 25,871 men aged 50 years and older and women aged 55 years and older. We divided the groups and asked them to take real vitamin D or a ‘fake drug’ every day. Over the next five years, a group of experts investigated the effectiveness of vitamin D supplements, but found no evidence. First, they found that vitamin D did not prevent cancer or cardiovascular disease in the study participants. It didn’t help prevent falls, improve cognitive function, reduce atrial fibrillation, change body composition, reduce the frequency of migraines, improve stroke outcomes, prevent macular degeneration, or reduce knee pain.

Of course there are exceptions. People with diseases such as celiac disease or Crohn’s disease need vitamin D supplements, even if they have difficulty getting sunlight and eating foods that contain vitamin D, such as grains and dairy products, on a daily basis. But Dr. Cummings says it’s “extremely difficult” for the average person to become so severely deficient in vitamin D.

Until now, the prevailing opinion was that vitamin D promotes bone health, and even healthy people have been taking vitamin D supplements when their vitamin D levels are slightly lowered. Dr. Leboff, an osteoporosis expert at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was astonished at the findings that vitamin D supplementation had no effect, but whether the study “should patients with osteoporosis take calcium and vitamin D along with osteoporosis medications?” He says he can’t give you an answer. Many doctors say they will continue to recommend vitamin D intake for osteoporosis patients.

But the study authors are adamant. In particular, Dr. Rosen became a vitamin D treatment nihilist. “I no longer believe in the (vitamin D) recommendation of 600 units. What in particular should I do?”

(NYT, “Study Finds Another Condition That Vitamin D Pills Do Not Help”)

By Jang Yoon-jung, staff reporter [e-mail]

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