paralleling the widespread obesity epidemic.
VITAMIN D: THE ANTI-AGING VITAMIN?
We’ve evolved in the sun, and vitamin D is a chemical
workhorse that our biology came to count on. It plays a role
in regulating the expression of nearly one thousand genes in
the human body—that’s nearly 5 percent of the human
genome! It could almost be considered a wonder vitamin,
except that vitamin D isn’t even a true vitamin—it’s a
hormone dependent upon sun exposure.
Some of vitamin D’s many duties involve dampening the
pro-inflammatory response and defending your cells from
the wear and tear of aging. In fact, women who had blood
levels within 40 to 60 ng/ml were shown to have the longest
telomeres compared to age-matched controls. Telomeres are
structures that protect your DNA from damage, and they
typically shorten with age. It is believed that having longer
telomeres at any given age is better.
Another study found that in female identical twins, those
twins with the lowest levels of vitamin D had shorter
telomeres, corresponding to five years of accelerated
biological aging. This certainly helps to understand whether
“healthy” aging is a matter of nature (your genetics) or
nurture (your environment). These women had the same
nature (the same genetic makeup), but those with lower
vitamin D looked biologically older under the microscope!