Vitamin Information Center

Being a vegetarian may actually be bad for your brain, according to a study published in the Sept. 9 issue of Neurology, The Sun reported.

The study said those on a meat-free diet are six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage as the most vitamin B12 is found in meats, liver, fish and milk.

According to the study, vitamin B12 may protect older people against brain shrinkage.

A study of 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87 found that people who had higher B12 levels were six times less likely to experience a loss in brain volume compared to those who had lower levels of the vitamin in their blood. None of the people in the study had a B12 deficiency.

Brain shrinkage typically occurs after the age of 60 and has been linked to memory loss.

For the research, participants underwent brain scans, memory testing and physical exams. Researchers also collected blood samples to check vitamin B12 levels. Brain scans and memory tests were performed five years after the initial testing.

“Many factors that affect brain health are thought to be out of our control, but this study suggests that simply adjusting our diets to consume more vitamin B12 through eating meat, fish, fortified cereals or milk may be something we can easily adjust to prevent brain shrinkage and so perhaps save our memory,” said study author Anna Vogiatzoglou, of the University of Oxford, in a news release.

Vogiatzoglou said the study did not look at whether taking vitamin B12 supplements would have the same effect on memory.

By Chantal Britt

April 15 (Bloomberg) — Vitamin E helped people with Alzheimer’s disease live longer with the degenerative brain disorder than those who didn’t take the supplement, according to research presented at a neurologists meeting in Chicago.

Patients with the irreversible brain condition who took vitamin E with or without a standard medicine were 26 percent more likely to live longer than people not taking the vitamin, the study showed. The combination of the drug with the vitamin was more beneficial than either agent alone.

Previous research has shown that the vitamin, which is naturally found in some vegetables oils, nuts and green leafy vegetables, can delay the progression of the brain disease. The new data, presented at the meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, showed that vitamin E also seems to prolong survival time of Alzheimer’s patients.

“This is particularly important because recent studies in heart disease patients have questioned whether vitamin E is beneficial for survival,” study author Valory Pavlik from Baylor College of Medicine’s Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Center in Houston, Texas, said in a release.

The researchers followed 847 people with Alzheimer’s disease for an average of five years to see whether the vitamin helped patients live longer. Recent studies have raised questions about the safety and efficacy of vitamin E to treat Alzheimer’s disease patients, Pavlik said in the abstract.

About two-thirds of the group studied took 1,000 international units of vitamin E twice a day along with a cholinesterase inhibitor, a common type of Alzheimer’s drug. Less than 10 percent of the group took vitamin E alone and about 15 percent didn’t take vitamin E.

`More Research’

“People who took a cholinesterase inhibitor without vitamin E didn’t have a survival benefit,” Pavlik said in the release that was distributed by the neurology association. “More research needs to be done to determine why this may be the case.”

There’s currently no cure for Alzheimer’s and no way to slow its progression. Scientists are studying whether nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, cholesterol-lowering medicines or supplements such as folic acid, gingko biloba or vitamins E, B6, or B12 can slow progression of the disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in people 65 and older. More than 4.5 million people in the U.S. have the disease, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The number of people who have dementia is set to rise to 42 million by 2020 and to 81 million by 2040 worldwide, according to research in 2005.

Pfizer Inc.’s Aricept, Johnson & Johnson’s Reminyl and Novartis AG’s Exelon are among the cholinesterase inhibitors approved to treat dementia. Doctors often also prescribe antidepressants such as Eli Lilly & Co.’s Prozac or psychosis drugs including J&J’s Haldol to relieve dementia symptoms.

Chronic kidney disease patients may see their risk of death drop by one quarter if they take a form of vitamin D, a new study says.

In a study of more than 1,400 people with chronic kidney disease, those that were taking the drug calcitriol, a form of activated vitamin D, had a 26 per cent reduction in their risk of death versus those who were not on the drug. Overall, the patients on calcitriol had their risk of either death or dialysis due to a loss of kidney function fall by 20 per cent.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

A healthy human body uses first the liver and then the kidneys to convert vitamin D obtained through diet and sunlight into an active form that the body can use. However, it is believed that patients with chronic kidney disease are unable to do complete the second step.

They are often prescribed activated vitamin D to help lower elevated levels of the parathyroid hormone, which can lead to a weakening of the bones. However, people with kidney disease often suffer from calcified, or stiff, blood vessels, which can lead to a host of cardiovascular problems. Vitamin D increases calcium levels in the blood, which doctors fear could exacerbate this problem.

“We did find that people who got the activated vitamin D drug did have a higher risk of having a high calcium level in the blood,” study author Dr. Bryan Kestenbaum of the University of Washington told Ctv.ca.

“But the overall amount of people that that happened to was relatively small, and the overall balance was that people who got the activated vitamin D drug survived longer.”

Kestenbaum speculated that vitamin D leads to decreased mortality rates because of its known ability to lower risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, diabetes and inflammation.

He said that the next step in this field of research would be to conduct randomized clinical trials to confirm vitamin D’s effect on survival rates among patients with kidney disease.

NattoPharma, Norway, and P.L. Thomas today note the publication of a new study demonstrating vitamin K’s role in promoting healthy bones in children. Published online at the British Journal of Nutrition link, the researchers followed 307 healthy children, with an average age of 11.2 years, over a two year period and measured skeletal bone mineral content. They found improved status of the K vitamins over the two year period resulted in better mineral content and improved bone mass of the whole body.

According to the lead author, Marieke Summeren, Ph.D., “As children grow the increase in bone mass may fail to keep up with the increase in height, or length of the bone, and as a consequence, this imbalance may result in fracture.” She continued, “But the main threat of a long-term shortage of K vitamins is that peak bone mass may be compromised, and as we age and begin to lose bone density, the risk of fracture in later life is increased.”

Study author Leon J. Schurgers,Ph.D.commented, “Numerous population studies and interventional trials have established the consumption of K vitamins to bone strength, structure and the reduction of the risk of fracture. This is due to the need to activate the vitamin K-dependent protein osteocalcin, which is essential for the body to utilize calcium in a healthy bone tissue. Unfortunately, most people, including children, are likely deficient in the K vitamins related to the need for bone health.”

This is among the first studies linking K vitamins to bone health in children. Vitamin K status was evaluated by measured by the amount of active osteocalcin to inactive osteocalcin. Without adequate vitamin K, the osteocalcin remains inactive, and thus not effective. Previous research has evaluated vitamin K status in children and found that they have inadequate K vitamins consumption to fully activate osteocalcin.

“There are two types of vitamin K from dietary sources. Vitamin K1 is found in leafy green vegetables, and Vitamin K2, also called menaquinones, are predominately found in fermented cheeses, curd, and the fermented soy called natto,” stated Schurgers. “Vitamin K1 is mostly used by the liver where it is involved in the synthesis of certain blood clotting factors. Vitamin K2 is also equally active outside the liver, in tissues including bone. Thus it is important to have good sources of both types of vitamin K!”

The recommended intakes of vitamin K today are based solely on coagulation. However, K vitamins are also necessary for the activation of osteocalcin, a protein necessary to transport calcium from the blood to form healthy bone matrix. Also, K vitamins are needed to activate matrix GLA protein (MGP), the most potent inhibitor of vascular calcification known. In essence, K vitamins are necessary to keep calcium in your bones and out of your arteries.

About Vitamin K2
The role of newly recognized vitamin K2 has for the past decade been linked to two of the most important health issues, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. This link specifically centers on calcium utilization- implying that there is concurrent arterial calcification and osteoporosis when metabolism of calcium is inadequate. K vitamins are essential to activate proteins involved in calcium metabolism.

Numerous population studies and interventional trials have established the consumption of vitamins K and K2 to bone strength, structure and the reduction of the risk of fracture. More recently, and specifically to vitamin K2, a significant role in cardiovascular health has been established.

A study published in the Journal of Nutrition called the “Rotterdam Study” in 2004, followed over 4,800 people for a ten year period. The study found increased intake of specifically vitamin K2 from dietary sources significantly reduced the incidence of arterial calcification and the risk of CHD mortality by 50% as compared to low dietary vitamin K2 intake. In this study, vitamin K1 had no effect at all.

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PLT offers a natural vitamin K2 under the trade name MenaQ7 in alliance NattoPharma, Norway, the owner of the brand MenaQ7.

About MenaQ7™
MenaQ7 provides Natural Vitamin K2 as an extract of natto, a fermented soy food from Japan. Natto is particularly rich in the highly bio-available form of vitamin K2 called menaquinone-7 (MK-7). MenaQ7 provides the only commercially available Natural Vitamin K2 with guaranteed actives and stability, clinical substantiation and international patents awarded and pending.

For more information on the health benefits of MenaQ7, please visit www.menaq7.com

About NattoPharma
NattoPharma, Norway, is a publically-traded company and the exclusive international supplier of MenaQ7 natural Vitamin K2. NattoPharma has entered into a multi-year research and development program to substantiate and discover the health benefits of natural vitamin K2 for applications in the exciting marketplace for functional food and health food supplements. www.nattopharma.com

About PL Thomas
PL Thomas, a New Jersey-based ingredient supplier, offers fifty years of innovation in securing reliable, high quality raw materials for the food/functional food and nutrition industries. PLT is a one-stop resource for application solutions, current industry information and technical service, and specializes in water-soluble gums and clinically-supported botanical extracts. www.plthomas.com

For more information, please contact Eric Anderson at eric@plthomas.com - 973-984-0900 x215.