Vitamin D in diet might ease effects of age on memory
If you don’t want to dumb down with age, vitamin D may be the meal ticket.
A boosted daily dosage of the vitamin over several months helped middle-aged rats navigate a difficult water maze better than their lower-dosed cohorts, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The supplement appears to boost the machinery that helps recycle and repackage signaling chemicals that help neurons communicate with one another in a part of the brain that is central to memory and learning.
"This process is like restocking shelves in grocery stores," said study co-author Nada Porter, a biomedical pharmacologist at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.
