A study into the positive benefits of vitamin D3 aimed to show that it could potentially lessen the risk of contracting type one diabetes and other autoimmune conditions in patients. Having read a lot of these studies in the last few months, this one’s given me some small cause for concern. They claim to have used blood samples from 2,000 healthy patients, half on which remained healthy and half of which contracted type one diabetes. They measured the vitamin D levels in these patients and it became clear that those with lower levels of vitamin D were more than twice as likely to develop type one diabetes than those with higher levels.
The concern with this study is, it’s impossible to predict who’s going to get type one diabetes. If we could do that then we’d be a lot closer to curing the disease! As such, suggesting they started with 2,000 people and half happened to contract the condition and half didn’t seems a little unlikely. Type one diabetes is certainly on the rise but not to the extent of ½ of people getting it. I’d take these results with a pinch of salt and wait for further study before ramming as much vitamin D into your kids as you can!
Even though I think the study lacks much backing in terms of results and testing methodology, it doesn’t mean you can’t try and eat more vitamin D. Try using supplements to get more of the substance into your or your kids’ diets. Better to be safe than sorry after all and, providing you don’t overdo it, you’re not going to do any harm.