The research, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that vitamin D may help maintain the stability of telomeres, the protective caps at the end of chromosomes that tend to shorten as people get older.
That shortening is a natural part of aging, but it has been linked to certain age-related diseases. Among those diseases are cancer of the bladder, lungs, kidneys, and gastrointestinal systems.
"Our findings suggest that targeted vitamin D supplementation may be a promising strategy to counter a biological aging process, although further research is warranted," said Haidong Zhu, MD, PhD, the first author of the study and a molecular geneticist at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University, in a statement.
Experts agree the new research is interesting, but they note it has its limits.
"Telomere length was protected with vitamin D supplementation, but it's not clear how that translates to real life biological aging," Marilyn Tan, MD, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford University in California, told Healthline. Tan wasn't involved in the study.
"The present study involved only a relatively small number of people, looked only at telomeres in white blood cells, and did not look extensively at the health impact of these telomere changes," added David Cutler, MD, a family medicine physician at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. "So, the clinical implications one can derive from this study are quite limited." Cutler was likewise not involved in the study....<<<Read More>>>...
