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Too Much Alcohol Could Reduce Vitamin A Levels in Your Body
Before understanding how too much alcohol could reduce the Vitamin A count in your body, it's important to understand why Vitamin A is important for you. Vitamin A is key to a strong immune system and improves your eyesight. It comes from two main sources: plants and animal products. According to web MD, Vitamin A supplements are used in the treatment for cancers, HIV, dry eye and measles.
A study published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal suggests that chronic alcohol consumption has a dramatic effect on the way the body handles vitamin A. Long-term drinking lowers vitamin A levels in the liver, which is the main site of alcohol breakdown and vitamin A storage, while raising vitamin A levels in many other tissues.
"We hope this study will lead to a broader understanding and appreciation of the fact that excessive consumption of alcohol has a negative effect on vitamin A function in the body," said one of the researchers Robin Clugston from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, New York.He added, "Ultimately, we hope that vitamin A will be seen as a broad target for alcohol in multiple tissues of the body and that our understanding of alcohol-induced disease will be linked together by its effects on vitamin A."Clugston and colleagues conducted multiple experiments using several groups of mice including those who received alcohol-containing food and alcohol-free food.
They analysed the liver and other organs (kidney, spleen, heart, lung, white adipose, brown adipose and blood), from both groups of mice and measured tissue vitamin A levels.The alcohol-fed mice had distinct changes in how their body handled vitamin A. In general, vitamin A levels were lower in the liver and higher in other tissues. This strongly suggests that vitamin A in the liver is reduced by excessive alcohol consumption and that these findings are important in the development of alcoholic liver disease.
source:http://food.ndtv.com/health/too-much-alcohol-could-reduce-vitamin-a-levels-in-your-body-1213556
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Vitamin K antagonists do not affect bone mineral density, fracture risk
Vitamin K antagonists do not increase the risk for fracture or reduce bone mineral density, according to findings published in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.
“Because osteocalcin, a protein produced by osteoblasts, undergoes the same carboxylation process [as vitamin K], the inhibition of the gamma-carboxylation exerted by vitamin K antagonists leads to lower incorporation in the bone matrix,” the researchers write. “Undercarboxylated osteolcalcin serum levels increase with the use of vitamin K antagonists, but whether this translates into fracture risk or lower bone mineral density values is still controversial.”
Nicola Veronese, MD, of the department of medicine, geriatrics section, at the University of Padova in Italy, and fellow researchers examined data from 79,663 patients treated with vitamin K antagonists and 597,348 controls, which included healthy individuals and patients with a medical illness. All participants were identified through a literature search.
Two investigators completed the PubMed and Embase search from database inauguration through August 2014 for studies that compared fractures and bone mineral density among patient and control groups. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were selected.
Altogether, 21 studies were included for analysis. Patients treated with vitamin K antagonists were found to have a higher risk for fracture in both cross-sectional (three studies; RR = 1.24; 95% CI, 1.12-1.39) and longitudinal (seven studies; RR = 1.09; 95% CI, 1.01-1.18) investigations, as well as more incident hip fractures (four studies; RR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.05-1.31). However, when studies that matched patients treated with vitamin K antagonists with healthy controls were evaluated (n = 4), findings in longitudinal studies became nonsignificant.
Bone mineral density values were similar among patients treated with vitamin K antagonists and medical controls at all study sites. The researchers note that one study showed lower spine T-scores in patients treated with vitamin K antagonists as compared with healthy controls (standardized mean difference, –0.45; 95% CI, –0.75 to –0.14).
“The use of [vitamin K antagonists] seems to neither significantly increase fracture risk when matching on confounding factors nor reduce [bone mineral density] beyond effects of medical illness,” the researchers write. “Since the use of [vitamin K antagonist] treatment, as well as osteoporosis and fractures, are continuously increasing, particularly in older people, future studies using appropriate matching procedures, following patients for sufficiently long periods and including newer oral anticoagulants are needed to clarify the short- and long-term effects of [vitamin K antagonists] on bone health.”
source:http://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/hematology/news/online/%7Bc07099db-a99d-4f38-8bc0-510d964642f4%7D/vitamin-k-antagonists-do-not-affect-bone-mineral-density-fracture-risk
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Vitamin D supplements little help for obese teens
Taking vitamin D supplements does not benefit obese teens and may actually harm their health, new research indicates.
Studies have suggested a link between vitamin D deficiency and problems such as insulin resistance and heart disease, and some doctors put obese teens on high-dose vitamin D supplementation to try to slow or reverse such obesity-related health problems.
But this latest research found the supplements do not improve obese teens' heart health or reduce their diabetes risk, said Dr. Seema Kumar, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic Children's Center in Rochester, Minn. In addition, the supplements may be linked to increased levels of cholesterol and fat-storing triglycerides, according to a Mayo Clinic news release.
"After three months of having vitamin D boosted into the normal range with supplements, these teenagers showed no changes in body weight, body mass index, waistline, blood pressure or blood flow," Kumar added.
She has studied the effects of vitamin D supplementation in children for 10 years, and her latest findings were published online Aug. 14 in the journal Pediatric Obesity.
"I have been surprised that we haven't found more health benefit," Kumar said. "We're not saying it's bad to take vitamin D supplements at reasonable doses, and we know most obese teens are vitamin D-deficient. We're just saying the jury is still out on how useful it is for improving overall health in adolescents," she explained.
"We're not saying the links between vitamin D deficiency and chronic diseases don't exist for children -- we just haven't found any yet," Kumar said.
Consuming too much vitamin D can also result in vitamin D toxicity, which causes poor appetite, nausea, vomiting and kidney complications, Kumar said.
While the study found an association between vitamin D supplementation and higher levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Kumar suggested large, placebo-controlled studies are needed to determine the long-term effects of vitamin D supplementation on children and teens.
Source: http://www.wsfa.com/story/29787338/vitamin-d-supplements-little-help-for-obese-teens-study-finds
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