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Timestamps:
00:00 New Vitamin D and Telomere Study
02:24 Questioning the Accuracy of the qPCR Method
03:39 Understanding the Biological Significance of Telomere Length
05:16 Limitations of the Study
06:21 Key Takeaways from the Study
07:00 The Controversy Surrounding Vitamin D Supplements
09:04 The Revised Endocrine Society Vitamin D Guidelines
09:46 Dr Brad’s Personal Vitamin D Intake
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Here are the links to the research papers referenced in the video:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002916525002552
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-022-00842-x
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4112289
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/44/5/1673/2594545
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.630186/full
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11896355
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7089819/
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/109/8/1961/7686350
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16529140/
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/96/7/1911/2833671
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31454046/
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/109/8/1907/7685305
Thumbnail by James Kelly
Video edited by Troy Young
Script by John Milliken
The links above are affiliate links, so I receive a small commission every time you use them to purchase a product. The content contained in this video, and its accompanying description, is not intended to replace viewers’ relationships with their own medical practitioner. Always speak with your doctor regarding the content of this channel, and especially before using any products, services, or devices discussed on this channel.
A new study shows that vitamin D can slow aging. That’s according to the latest headlines anyway. But is that really what the study shows? What dose of vitamin D should we take? And should we get a vitamin D blood test? So, let’s take a look. The study examined a subset of participants in the massive vital study. So, this was a study of the impact of vitamin D and omega3 in a group of over 25,000 adults. There were four groups. One took vitamin D at 2,000 international units a day. Another took omega3 at 1 g a day. One group took both. And then there was a placebo group and the researchers measured the length of telomeres in participants white blood cells called luccoytes at baseline. Then they checked them again at the 2-year mark and at the four-year mark. And here were the key findings. So omega-3 had no effect. But vitamin D supplementation it seemed to reduce the rate of telomeir loss by 140 base pairs. So the researchers concluded that daily vitamin D supplementation may have a role in counteracting telmir loss and cell scinessence. So what’s the connection here between these findings and aging? So think of telomeres as caps that protect the ends of our chromosomes from fraying. And every time our cells divide, the telomeres get a little bit shorter and eventually they get too short and the cell stops dividing. So that state is called cellular scinessence. And these aged cells, they don’t just rest quietly and retire. They remain active and they pump out different substances that can promote inflammation in the surrounding tissues. They can even push nearby cells into a scinesscent state as well. So it appears that this is an important driver of the problems that we associate with aging. All this means that preventing the shortening of telomeres may hold a lot of promise when it comes to counteracting the effects of aging. So this is the big idea behind the book the telomeir effect and it was written by a Nobel Prize winning researcher called Elizabeth Blackburn. Blackburn won the prize for helping to uncover some of the key dynamics affecting telomeir length and she argues that there’s lifestyle choices that we can make that translate into longer telomeres and healthier aging. So that’s the story. But what do these study results actually show? Do they show us that vitamin D is one of the tools that we can use to slow aging? And am I rethinking the dose of vitamin D that I take in light of this new research? Well, first of all, we need to talk about the impact that was found. So, is 140 base pairs over a 4-year time period a big deal or not? Well, lucasite telomeres, they shorten by about 20 to 40 base pairs per year. So given that average decline, 140 sounds like a big number and that equates to about 3 and a half to seven years of telmir shortening. But we do need to add some critical context here. So the method used in the study to measure telmir length is called the qPCR method. And just like any measuring methodology, there are some limits in terms of its accuracy. So a key question is this. When the qPCR test gives us a result of 140, how confident can we be that this reflects the actual number? So one way that we can approach this question is to repeat that test on the same sample. So if one time we get 140 but then another time we get 120 and again 190 on a second and third attempt then we know that this test isn’t particularly accurate. So researchers undertook exactly this type of experiment to see how accurate the qPCR method is and it was actually an international effort involving 10 different labs. So they all used the same DNA samples and what they found is that the measurements of telomere length varied by more than 20% between the different labs. So remember these are the same DNA samples. So the actual lengths of telomeres are the same but within a lab we’re seeing again different results and the variations ranged from 1.4% to 9.5%. So let’s return to our figure of 140 base pairs. So that’s within the range of measurement error. So, it’s hard to know exactly if we’re seeing a real difference or whether this is just noise. But let’s lay aside that worry for a moment. Suppose that this figure of 140 base pairs is 100% accurate. Is this difference biologically meaningful? So, in other words, will that 140 difference translate to reduced heart attack rates? Will it improve muscle performance? Will it lower cancer rates? So, it’s important to note that individual variation in lucasite telomeres is immense. To answer that question, we need to have a look at the UK bioank analysis of 472,000 participants that found that mortality risk rose by 8% for each standard deviation decrease in telomere length. So they also explored the linkages between telomere length and specific mortality causes. So sometimes they noticed a relationship. So for instance, they noticed that shorter telomeres were associated with increased deaths from respiratory and digestive disorders. But in other cases there didn’t seem to be a connection. So this was the case with cancer related and neurological disease related mortality. But based on the data that they provide, we can’t say the associations that they did find like that 8% mortality risk boost translates into base pairs. So we have suggestive evidence here that telmir length makes a difference. But we’re still unsure about how significant a change of 140 base pairs might actually be. And it’s important to bear in mind that cohort studies like this one that can just give us associations. It’s not possible to say from these studies alone whether shorter telomeres drive disease states. So as the researchers in the study note an association study cannot distinguish between causes and consequences. Instead shorter lucasite telomeres they may indicate stressed bone marrow which is where these cells are made and it might be that whatever is driving that stress is driving the mortality increase as opposed to the shorter telomeres being the primary cause. So overall, the study authors conclude that the prognostic relevance of telmir length is relatively limited. The observed change in mortality risk with shorter telomeres, it is modest. And I’m trying to emphasize this point because it often gets lost in the excitement of new findings like the one that we’re discussing. The traditional boring metrics like BMI, LDL cholesterol levels, APOB, blood pressure, and exercise performance metrics, those are the ones that really move the needle when it comes to long-term health outcomes. So those are the ones that we should be paying the most attention to. But returning to this impact again of 140 base pair change in telmir length. What does the vital study itself actually show? Because after all the vital study’s primary purpose was to look at outcomes like cancer and heart disease and strokes. So do we see differences in health outcomes that mirror the differences in telmir length. Well in the main findings the vitamin D group did not see any significant reductions in heart attacks, strokes or all cause mortality. and the reduction in cancer mortality also failed to reach statistical significance. If the modest telmir length shortening is real, it certainly didn’t translate to any tangible improvements in outcomes. So for me, here’s the key takeaways from this new study. We are not 100% sure whether there’s a real impact on lucasite telmir length with vitamin D supplementation. And even if there is a real impact, we’re not sure if this translates into meaningful differences in terms of health outcomes. So, what about those headlines proclaiming that the study shows that vitamin D slows aging? Well, I think it’s fair to say that that’s about getting more clicks rather than accurately reflecting the findings. It’s also a helpful reminder in a time when there’s a push to test for everything, especially in the dreaded longevity clinics, because not all tests give us information that’s actually useful and can be used to improve our health. So, again, let’s use vitamin D as an example here. So there’s been a tremendous controversy when it comes to vitamin D supplements and our understanding has shifted in significant ways over the past decade or so. So if we back up to the early 2000s, two things were happening at once. So the researchers were uncovering associations between low vitamin D and many important health problems through population studies. They were also raising alarm bells that huge numbers of people were deficient in vitamin D. So in that context, the endocrine society published a set of influential guidelines about vitamin D supplements. So, it included the recommendation to have up to 2,000 international units a day of vitamin D to get the levels in the blood to a sufficient threshold. It also included support for a pretty broad use of screening below vitamin D levels through a blood test. So, those recommendations and others like them helped to boost vitamin D supplements dramatically. But in the years since those guidelines, we’ve learned a heck of a lot and it’s caused a significant revision in those recommendations. So, for one thing, we’ve investigated the findings of those observational study trials looking at vitamin D’s causal impact. So, as with the vital trial, which we looked at above, the findings have mostly been underwhelming. Vitamin D supplements, they haven’t made a huge impact on problems like cancer or heart disease. And we’ve learned that taking too much vitamin D can cause problems. So, for instance, a three-year clinical trial in Canada tested the impact of several different doses of vitamin D. One group took 400 international units, another took 4,000, and a third group took 10,000. And the researchers were looking specifically at how this affected bone mineral density. And what they found was shocking. So those in the higher doses, they didn’t improve outcomes. In fact, it actually made things worse. So bone density in the wrist, it decreased by 2.4% in the 4,000 international unit group and 3.5% in the 10,000 international unit group. Now again supplements are very different to sun exposure because the body can control how much vitamin D it produces via the skin. So again just supplementing is very different to sun exposure because while we need adequate amounts of vitamin D for healthy bones, too much of it can throw things out of balance and it can start to pull calcium from our bones which the trial that we just looked at demonstrates. We’ve also had to dial back our worries about a pandemic of vitamin D deficiency. So this is reflected in the newest set of guidelines from the endocrine society. So they acknowledge that we aren’t sure about the optimal vitamin D blood levels. So that means that vitamin D blood tests, they aren’t recommended just to see what our levels are. Instead, the guidelines do highlight certain groups where vitamin D supplementation is particularly recommended. So these groups include children up to the age of 18, pregnant women, people with pre-diabetes, and people over the age of 75. But what about for the rest of us? Well, the latest Endocrine Society guidelines suggest that we should take about 600 international units for younger adults and increase that to 800 international units as you reach 70 years and above. So, personally, I take 1,000 international units of vitamin D as part of micro vitamin. So, that level helps me to make sure that I’m locking in the benefits of vitamin D, but without getting anywhere near the high doses that might lead to problems. But just because I take a supplement does not in any way mean that you should as well. But let’s return to the topic of aging. So, for now, we don’t know whether vitamin D helps to combat it, but we do know about a silent problem that can rapidly age our brains, and it’s massively underdiagnosed. So, make sure to check out this next video here to find out what the signs are and what you can do about
