Senior citizens who are not vitamin D deficient have a better chance of walking after hip fracture surgery, according to a Rutgers-led study.
Senior citizens who are not vitamin D deficient have a better chance of walking after hip fracture surgery, according to a Rutgers-led study.
The findings in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggest that vitamin D deficiency could limit mobility in older adults, said senior author Sue Shapses, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
Shapses suggests that older adults take 800 international units (IU), equivalent to 20 micrograms, of vitamin D daily to prevent deficiency. Vitamin D is important for bone health, and people get it through some foods, exposure to the sun and vitamin pills.
“An important next step is learning how vitamin D affects mobility,” said Shapses, who is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and director of the Center for Human Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism at Rutgers’ New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health. “For example, it is not clear if severe vitamin D deficiency is associated with direct effects on muscle, cognition and/or other organ systems.”
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Image: Senior citizens who are not vitamin D deficient have a better chance of walking after hip fracture surgery, according to a Rutgers-led study. The findings in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggest that vitamin D deficiency could limit mobility in older adults, said senior author Sue Shapses, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. (Credit: Sue Shapses/Rutgers University-New Brunswick)
