Older people need more sun, study finds
Getting out into the sunshine makes everyone feel good, but a new UK-Chinese study shows that getting more sun can actually help older people to be healthier and avoid such life-threatening conditions as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The study, carried out at Warwick Medical School in the UK in collaboration with the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences in China, is published in the journal Diabetes Care. It investigated the links between vitamin D deficiency and metabolic syndrome in 3,262 Chinese people aged between 50 and 70. Vitamin D is produced in the skin through exposure to sunlight, and a deficiency of it can cause many health problems including bone softening, weakened muscles and rickets in children. The researchers found a high correlation between vitamin D deficiency and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a combination of metabolic and medical disorders that can raise a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease and also diabetes, due to its tendency to cause increased insulin resistance. Warwick Medical School's Dr Oscar Franco, who led the research, said, 'Vitamin D deficiency is becoming a condition that is causing a large burden of disease across the globe with particular deleterious impact among the elderly. Our results are consistent with those found in British and American populations. We found that low vitamin D levels were associated with an increased risk of having metabolic syndrome and [were] also significantly associated with increased insulin resistance.' Many factors may account for higher vitamin D deficiency in older people including a more sedentary, indoor lifestyle, the natural ageing process and a poorer diet with a lower natural vitamin D content. 'As we get older, our skin is less efficient at forming vitamin D and our diet may also become less varied,' said Dr Franco. 'Most importantly, however, the dermal production of vitamin D following a standard exposure to UVB [ultraviolet B or medium-wave] light decreases with age because of atrophic skin changes. When we are older we may need to spend more time outdoors to stimulate the same levels of vitamin D we had when we were younger.' Dr Franco called for further research on the subject, saying, 'Vitamin D deficiency is now recognised as a worldwide concern and metabolic syndrome has become a global epidemic. More research is needed to find out why older people are more likely to have lower levels of vitamin D and how this is linked to the development of metabolic syndrome and related metabolic diseases.'
Countries
China, United Kingdom