Study: Little benefit for vitamin D, omega-3, exercise in seniors

Vit D is useful if you're like me and stay out of the sun. Wayyyy out of the sun, and have for decades.

For bone density I take chelated calcium-magnesium. Also for decades, ever since I became allergic to milk at age 20.

When I finally managed to wrangle a bone density test out of my HMO at age 57, I was congratulated on having the bone density of a 23 yr old.

My elder sister had asked me to get a bone density test as she was diagnosed with osteoporosis that was apparently caused by malfunctioning parathyroids. Like me she took cal-mag supplements, but in her case the glandular malfunction caused calcium to just circulate around in her blood, rather than deposit it into the bones.

No one had any idea anything was wrong (no symptoms, obviously) until bones started breaking in her feet - she was an ICU nurse. As she weighs maybe 85 lbs soaking wet they had to search for a cause for almost two years before finally doing the surgery!

It's always best to eat a healthy diet. But very few people DO eat a completely healthy diet, day in and day out. And as you age, you eat less and less. This does not even take into consideration your digestive process slows down and becomes less efficient at getting nutrients out of the food you are eating.

I watched my MIL as she aged and her diet was atrocious. All she concentrated on was salt and portion size. She was the perfect weight for her height, but nutritionally she was a disaster. Finally one day she fainted from low blood sugar (she wasn't diabetic) and I had to insist she start drinking a liquid protein supplement every day.
I learned many years ago that eating a healthy diet is really not complicated. If 80% of your diet comes from raw, unprocessed fruits & vegetables, you're eating a healthy diet.
 

I learned many years ago that eating a healthy diet is really not complicated. If 80% of your diet comes from raw, unprocessed fruits & vegetables, you're eating a healthy diet.
But you have to be ABLE to digest a raw diet, something I can not do. No fruits, no carbs-diabetic, no fiber-gastroparesis, and don’t get me started on protein, protein kills me. Finally had to start drinking a protein drink. It’s been suggested I start eating baby food. 🙁🤮.

So, while eating a healthy diet is uncomplicated for you, for me it’s a nightmare. As usual, generalizations and blanket statements are silly. I learned many years ago, that my life was an ongoing medical nightmare as is true for many people.
 
But you have to be ABLE to digest a raw diet, something I can not do. No fruits, no carbs-diabetic, no fiber-gastroparesis, and don’t get me started on protein, protein kills me. Finally had to start drinking a protein drink. It’s been suggested I start eating baby food. 🙁🤮.

So, while eating a healthy diet is uncomplicated for you, for me it’s a nightmare. As usual, generalizations and blanket statements are silly. I learned many years ago, that my life was an ongoing medical nightmare as is true for many people.
Well, I'm also diabetic. I have 2 - 3 servings of fruit per day. The notion that fruit is bad for diabetics is wrong, IMO. A medium-sized fruit (like an apple or orange has 12 - 15 gms carbs & also has needed fiber & vitamins. Non-starchy vegetables have hardly any carbs & even more vitamins & micronutrients that can prevent/minimize the damage caused by diabetes.
What is bad for diabetics (and everyone else) is processed foods - bread, pasta, chips, etc.
If your doctor told you to avoid fruit due to digestive issues, that's puzzling to me because fruit is very quickly & easily digested. And isn't baby food simply fruit & vegetables that have been blended?
 

Well, I'm also diabetic. I have 2 - 3 servings of fruit per day. The notion that fruit is bad for diabetics is wrong, IMO. A medium-sized fruit (like an apple or orange has 12 - 15 gms carbs & also has needed fiber & vitamins. Non-starchy vegetables have hardly any carbs & even more vitamins & micronutrients that can prevent/minimize the damage caused by diabetes.
What is bad for diabetics (and everyone else) is processed foods - bread, pasta, chips, etc.
If your doctor told you to avoid fruit due to digestive issues, that's puzzling to me because fruit is very quickly & easily digested. And isn't baby food simply fruit & vegetables that have been blended?
I am not to eat fruit due to being diabetic. Due gastroparesis, I am down to two small meals a day and sometimes a protein drink for dinner if I can stuff it in. Bread helps my stomach so I am eating it. I no longer care about my blood sugar. Let me whine a bit, I am in stomach pain hell. Hungry all the time. So there you go.
 
My doctor gave me a prescription for vitamin D; not the over-the-counter kind. I figured it can't hurt and it isn't too expensive. My first thought was that big pharma is trying to make up for lost opioid revenue.

Call and see what your levels were. The difference in over the counter and RX Vitamin D3 is strength. I think 10,000 IU is max for OTC, prescription is 50,000 IU.

Since nearly every study done on Covid outcomes and Vit D levels shows that low levels correlate with hospitalizations and poor outcomes, you need to know why your doctor wants you on so high a dose. It may be that your levels or low or that he wants you to take a higher dose periodically instead of everyday. If the latter, you can just buy OTC and take daily if it's cheaper than RX. Sometimes higher dose RX works out to be cheaper in the end.
 
I saw something interesting about floaters. I've been trying it for a couple of weeks & noting some improvement:
Very interesting.

I'd experienced miniscule floaters periodically in my eyes for as long as I can remember, and the condition always resolves itself with time.
 
Call and see what your levels were. The difference in over the counter and RX Vitamin D3 is strength. I think 10,000 IU is max for OTC, prescription is 50,000 IU.

Since nearly every study done on Covid outcomes and Vit D levels shows that low levels correlate with hospitalizations and poor outcomes, you need to know why your doctor wants you on so high a dose. It may be that your levels or low or that he wants you to take a higher dose periodically instead of everyday. If the latter, you can just buy OTC and take daily if it's cheaper than RX. Sometimes higher dose RX works out to be cheaper in the end.
I don't trust OTC since anyone can put Vitamin D on a bottle and market it. There are snake oil salesmen out there. My vitamin D levels were tested as low, so my doctor prescribed 12 capsules of 1.25 mg. to be taken one per week till gone.
 
Very interesting.

I'd experienced miniscule floaters in my eyes for as long as I can remember, and the condition always resolves itself with time.
I have a large floater and it can block my vision, but I can’t drive right now so it doesn’t matter that much. When I am forced to get surgery on my other eye, when I have no choice, then during that surgery he will remove that floater. But I have more pressing issues right now.
 
I don't trust OTC since anyone can put Vitamin D on a bottle and market it. There are snake oil salesmen out there. My vitamin D levels were tested as low, so my doctor prescribed 12 capsules of 1.25 mg. to be taken one per week till gone.

Due to autoimmune diseases and a genetic mutation that causes me not to utilize Vitamin D properly, I run low levels if I slack off D3 supplements. A few years ago, I broke a bone and it was not healing as it should. I got D levels tested, started faithfully taking D3 supplements and it finally healed. I had levels tested frequently during that time and they went up taking Vitacost brand supplements. I only order from them. They also carry other brands but their 'store' brand is cheaper and my levels went up taking them.
 
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Here Drs are giving older people prescriptions for Vitamin D & Zink. They are finding out that helps them battle Conav-19. If they get it and are not vaccinated it's just like a cold, As long as they have taken it for a few months.
 
I've come to believe that aside from keeping the makers of such vitamins and supplements wallowing in money, vitamins and supplements in general, do little, and have little effect on a person's overall health and well-being.
I don't take vitamins, but: Line up a hundred people who exercise regularly and a hundred who don't. Tell me which ones look better, seem happier, more likely to live longer. It's just common sense.

Then why is it ? that after [regularly] following a boxing training routine, and eating correctly ...... for most of my life ........ and yes I am being honest . Why am I suffering with the problems i have ?

Arthritis , heart disease, [pre] diabetes, and so on?

Someone else noted it, and I fully agree ... it's 90% genetics.

IMO, all the exercise & proper diet in the world cannot counter that ........
 
RGP. It's all about how you treat your body in years past. I rode bikes, horses fell off them on gravel roads, fell down roller skating. Now I have a partial knee replacement that's giving me fits. I use to do some welding at my Dad's gas station for people. I only used sunglasses for oxycycline welding & cutting.

Now I have wet MD in my right eye I get a shot every 4 to 7 weeks in that eye for the last 7 years. I have heart problems. Also Kidney stage 3 CKD. I never drank or smoked. But when I go to the grave this body will be fully used up.

FotoJet.jpg
 
RGP. It's all about how you treat your body in years past. I rode bikes, horses fell off them on gravel roads, fell down roller skating. Now I have a partial knee replacement that's giving me fits. I use to do some welding at my Dad's gas station for people. I only used sunglasses for oxycycline welding & cutting.

Now I have wet MD in my right eye I get a shot every 4 to 7 weeks in that eye for the last 7 years. I have heart problems. Also Kidney stage 3 CKD. I never drank or smoked. But when I go to the grave this body will be fully used up.

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"RGP. It's all about how you treat your body in years past.RGP. It's all about how you treat your body in years past."

Yes I agree about trauma damaging our bodies, but I just do not believe diet & exercise have that great of effect.

I have known 3 people that lived past 100 and all 3 smoked all their lives.

I've used the example before ....... Jack LaLane the king of fitness & proper diet , lived to be 96 . George Burns , drank alcohol , smoked cigars everyday & lived on nightclub / casino food & lived to be 100
 
My diabetic, sedentary aunt outlived my superfit brother in law by 10 years (90 versus 80). However my brother in law was active his whole life, doing judo, golf, traveling the world, you name it. Exercise might add a little longevity but it's more about improving the quality of your life while you're alive.
 
I take whatever my PCP says to take, including vaccines and things like tetanus shots. He (or she) went to med school, I didn't. And what was recommended 25 years ago may not be recommended today. At 50, Doc said to take a "senior" multivitamin, which I did until, about 10 years later, studies showed them to have little to no benefit. That's the way science works.
 
From the JAMA article (bold emphasis is mine):

"Limitations
This study has several limitations. First, 83% of participants were already engaging in moderate to high physical activity at baseline, and there may have been little potential for further benefit from additional exercise. The healthy study population may also explain the smaller number of fractures than anticipated. Similarly, more participants with baseline values near the maximum values for the SPPB and MoCA measures may have reduced the chance to detect a benefit of the interventions on these outcomes and limited generalizability of the study’s findings to older adults without major comorbidities. Second, the overall improvement of cognitive function may be explained by a learning effect. Third, only 40.7% of participants had 25(OH)D levels of less than 20 ng/mL at baseline, and according to current guidelines, all were allowed to take 800 IU/d of supplemental vitamin D outside the study medication. Fourth, given the large number of randomization groups and comparisons (3 main treatment groups × 6 clinical end points), even the P = .01 significance threshold may have been too liberal. Fifth, even for pairwise comparisons in which the P value was between .01 and <.05, the magnitude of the difference was small and likely not clinically meaningful."


My take:

1) 83% of the participants were already very active, so a bit more exercise might not have been a dramatic help. It's not like these were couch potatoes who moved to a regular exercise routine.

2) Since all participants in the study took Vitamin D supplements throughout, regardless of whether they were taking IU per day (in the placebo group) or taking an additional 2000 IU per day in the test group, this really was a test of whether there's much difference to be gained from that additional 2000 IU.

I'm not going to stop my exercise regimen, daily tablespoon of ground flaxseeds, or Vitamin D supplements based on this study - don't know about the rest of you.
 
Everyone is different, and should look for a regimen that works for them....proper diet, exercise, etc.

I've lost a few old friends, over the past decade. They all seem to have shared some commonalities.....excess weight, addiction to their TV's and booze, and lack of any real purpose in their retirement lifestyles.
 


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