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More sunlight for elderly may improve health

Category: Heart Health and Cholesterol

Older people may be able to reduce their risk of heart disease and diabetes by spending more time in the sun, and thus increasing their vitamin D levels.

"As we get older our skin is less efficient at forming vitamin D and our diet may also become less varied, with a lower natural vitamin D content," said Dr Oscar Franco at Warwick Medical School, adding that older people may need to spend more time in the sun to produce the same levels of vitamin D they did when younger.

Franco's research team gave vitamin D blood tests to 3,262 people in China aged 50-70 years old and looked at the link between the results and the presence of metabolic syndrome. They found that 94 percent of the participants did not have enough vitamin D and 42.3 percent had metabolic syndrome.

"Vitamin D deficiency is becoming a condition that is causing a large burden of disease across the globe with particular deleterious impact among the elderly," Franco said. In addition, the results are consistent with data gathered in British and American populations receiving vitamin D tests.