Dr. Rhonda Patrick

It's really a scientifically supported intervention for longevity and well-being.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick here.

A new study found that vitamin D supplementation was associated with a 40% lower risk of dementia over a decade.

After just five years, 84% of the vitamin D supplement users were dementia-free compared to 68% of the non-users.

This was a study of over 12,000 people.

And vitamin D reduced dementia risk by around 33% in adults with mild cognitive impairment and also had ApoE4.

This is a key genetic risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases.

Up to 25% of the population has one of these alleles, and it can double the risk of Alzheimer's disease if you have one of them.

If you have two of these alleles, you can have up to a tenfold higher risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Vitamin D is not just a vitamin.

Vitamin D gets converted into a steroid hormone that regulates over a thousand genes in our body.

It enters the nucleus of our cells and it regulates, it activates and turns on or it suppresses and turns off up to nearly 5% of the protein encoding human genome.

This is very relevant because up to 70% of Americans fall into a range known as deficient or insufficient.

So almost 30% of Americans actually are vitamin D deficient.

They have levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D below 20 nanograms per milliliter.

The other 40% or so has levels that's known as insufficient.

So these are people that have vitamin D levels above 20 nanograms per milliliter, but they're below 30 nanograms per milliliter.

And there's really a simple solution to avoiding this deficiency and insufficiency, and that is a vitamin D supplement.

Usually people that are vitamin D deficient, if they take around 2,000 to 4,000 IUs per day, they can get to a sufficient level.

There's a lot of reasons why vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is so widespread.