You may know vitamin D as the \u201csunshine vitamin\u201d because our\nbodies produce it in response to exposure to the sun. Among its many benefits,\nvitamin D helps keep our bones strong and boosts endocrine function, as well as\nthe immune and cardiovascular systems. There also appears to brain health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Working off the results of previous studies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Previous studies have found a link between vitamin D\ndeficiency and brain-related issues, such as schizophrenia, poor cognition,\nbrain damage and a decreased chance of recovering brain function after\nexperiencing cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With all of this research in mind, a team of scientists at\nthe University of Queensland Brain Institute in Australia decided to delve\ndeeper to find out how vitamin D correlated to memory function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For 20 weeks, the team deprived mice of the vitamin and then compared their cognitive test results to those of healthy mice who had plenty of vitamin D. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of 20 weeks, they found that the vitamin-deprived\nmice had fewer\u2014and weaker\u2014perineuronal nets in the region of the brain\nresponsible for the formation of memories\u2014the hippocampus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The theory on vitamin deficiency<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n These perineuronal nets help stabilize the connections\nbetween neurons. The researchers theorize that vitamin D deficiency makes it\neasier for enzymes to break down the nets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs neurons in the hippocampus lose their supportive\nperineuronal nets, they have trouble maintaining connections, and this\nultimately leads to a loss of cognitive function,\u201d explains the lead\nresearcher, Associate Professor Thomas Burne. \u201cThe next step is to test this\nnew hypothesis on the link between vitamin D deficiency, perineuronal nets and\ncognition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burne wants to continue his research to determine if the\nimpaired brain function in the hippocampus may contribute to cognitive\ndistortions and memory loss, two symptoms of schizophrenia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The research was published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You may know vitamin D as the \u201csunshine vitamin\u201d because our bodies produce it in response to exposure to the sun. Among its many benefits, vitamin D helps keep our bones strong and boosts endocrine function, as well as the immune and cardiovascular systems. There also appears to brain health. Working off the results of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[453],"tags":[837,862,767,723,732,979],"class_list":["post-13384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nutrition","tag-brain","tag-brain-health","tag-depression","tag-diet","tag-nutrition","tag-vitamin-d"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}