Greens, beans and dark chocolate to boost vitamin D
PEOPLE should eat dark, leafy greens and dark chocolate as well as taking supplements to get the proper dose of the sunshine vitamin D during the dark winter months, scientists say.
Beans, whole grains, oily fish and nuts will also all ensure vitamin D tablets work, the American research team found.
The mineral helps turn the food we eat into energy and makes sure the parathyroid glands, which produce hormones important for bone health, work normally.
Now scientists have found food rich in magnesium optimises vitamin D levels – raising it in people with deficient levels and lowering it in people with high levels.
Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin because most is made by the skin when exposed to direct sunlight, but between October and early March, we don’t get enough vitamin D from sunlight.
It is also found in a small number of foods such as oily fish like salmon, sardines, herring and mackerel, or red meat, liver, egg yolks and fortified foods, such as fat spreads or cereals.
Scotland has the lowest levels of vitamin D, due to a lack of sunshine and a diet low in oily fish. The NHS says everyone, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, should consider taking a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms of vitamin D during the autumn and winter.
Research professor, Dr Martha Shrubsole, at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville said: “A lot of people have received recommendations from their health care providers to take vitamin D supplements to increase their levels based upon their blood tests.
“In addition to vitamin D, however, magnesium deficiency is an underrecognised issue.
“Up to 80 per cent of people do not consume enough magnesium in a day to meet the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) based on those national estimates.”
Multiple Sclerosis is more common in countries further away from the equator.
Although there are many possible reasons for this, researchers have become particularly interested in the role that sunlight (and therefore vitamin D) could play in MS.
In Scotland, there are over 11,000 people with MS, making it more common in Scotland than most other countries in the world.
The study was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.