How vitamin D pills could help your backache
VITAMIN D tablets could help people with chronic backache and arthritis, research has found.
The ‘sunshine supplements’ could help many pain-related conditions, from menstrual cramps to fibromyalgia, biologists have said.
A review by scientists in Brazil states that vitamin D must be combined with good sleep to manage pain-related diseases.
That is because the vitamin, created by exposure to sunlight and found in oily fish, is believed to tackle inflammation.
Inflammation, the body’s immune response to illness, releases proteins which make people more sensitive to pain.
The vitamin is already recommended for pregnant women and claimed to ward off diseases such as dementia and multiple sclerosis, with some experts calling for it to be routinely added to food to prevent chronic colds and flu.
Lead author Dr Monica Levy Andersen, from the Federal University of Sao Paulo, said: ‘We can hypothesise that suitable vitamin D supplementation combined with sleep hygiene [good sleeping habits] may optimise the therapeutic management of pain-related diseases.’
The paper is published in the Journal of Endocrinology. Its editor, Dr Sof Andrikopoulos, from the University of Melbourne, said: ‘This research is very exciting and novel. We are unravelling the possible mechanisms of how vitamin D is involved in many complex processes.’ Nearly a third of Britons are deficient in vitamin D, because of a combination of lack of time outdoors, grey weather and diets low in fresh produce.
In the spring and summer, it is easier for the body to make vitamin D through the skin when it is exposed to sunshine. But many people do not make up for the gloomy weather in the autumn and winter by eating foods high in the vitamin, such as liver, red meat, eggs and fish.
The review cites several studies showing that taking supplements instead can help with musculoskeletal pain such as back ache. For example, one analysis from last year found people in hospital reduced their pain after three months of vitamin D pills.
The authors suggest that vitamin D works for autoimmune diseases by interfering with processes that make us sensitive to pain, thus raising our pain threshold. The vitamin can also work to help with soreness caused by injury.
Dr Andersen said: ‘It is necessary to understand the possible mechanisms involved in this relationship, including immunological and neurobiological pathways related to inter-relationship among sleep, vitamin D and pain.’
Dr Brian Hammond, chairman of the charity Backcare, said the latest research ‘will hopefully help the millions of sufferers of low back and neck pain’. He added: ‘Vitamin D levels in the general population decrease significantly in winter which may explain the increase in pain that patients report in the winter months.’
‘Very exciting and novel research’