Pregnancy, Alzheimer's and Vitamin D-3

John Cannell, MD - Executive Director of the Vitamin D Council

I happened to turn on the radio Sunday morning and I instantly recognized the voice. Being interviewed was John Cannell, MD, Executive Director of the Vitamin D Council, the foremost authority on vitamin D worldwide.

He was participating in a talk show interview with Katherine Albrecht, sharing amazing statistics, facts and insights into vitamin D deficiency. For example, did you know that 99+% of all pregnant women in America are deficient in vitamin D?

Do you know someone who is pregnant and about to have a child? Or at the other end of the life spectrum, do you know someone showing the initial signs of Alzheimer’s?

There’s a common link to both these totally diverse conditions: Vitamin D-3!

Vitamin D-3 is absolutely critical to a fetus’ development during pregnancy, and also lowers pregnancy complications, including gestational diabetes, preterm birth, and infection. According to a new research study by the Medical University of South Carolina, women who take 4,000 IU of vitamin D-3 daily in their second and third trimesters had one-half the incidence of pregnancy-related complications compared to women who took 400 IU of vitamin D every day, says neonatologist and study co-researcher Carol L. Wagner.

Vitamin D-3 also is beneficial for individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s, playing a role of helping to clear amyloid beta proteins which form the plaques that lead to Alzheimer’s.

For years you’ve heard me talk excitedly about about Curcumin, the ultra-powerful antioxidant compound from the Turmeric root, and how it shows promise in breaking down these plaques, well just last week scientists at UCLA and UC Riverside published their research findings in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease showing that combining Vitamin D and Curcumin for Alzheimer’s patients, may work better than either compound alone.

“We hope that vitamin D3 and curcumin, both naturally occurring nutrients, may offer new preventive and treatment possibilities for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Milan Fiala, study author and a researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

The team discovered that curcuminoids enhanced the surface binding of amyloid beta to macrophages and that vitamin D strongly stimulated the uptake and absorption of amyloid beta in macrophages in a majority of patients.

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Low Vitamin D Linked to Vaginal Infections

Low vitamin D levels may increase the risk of bacterial vaginosis, a common vaginal infection linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes, suggests a new study.

In a study with 469 women participating in a pregnancy cohort study, vitamin D levels below 20 nmol/L were associated with a 34 percent increase in the prevalence of bacterial vaginosis, compared to women with vitamin D levels over 80 nmol/L.

According to researchers led by Lisa Bodnar,  from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, a potential protective effect of vitamin D may be due to the vitamin’s influence on the immune system.

The study adds to an ever growing body of science supporting the benefits of maintaining healthy vitamin D levels.

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