As many women have learned over the years when visiting their doctors, conventional medicine essentially sees the loss of muscle strength that occurs with ageing as untreatable and inevitable. After the age of 30, human beings typically lose 3-8 percent of their muscle mass each decade. Over time this results in a decrease in muscle strength and a consequent increase in falls and mortality. However, a new study of postmenopausal women from Brazil has shown that vitamin D3 supplements can significantly increase muscle strength, protect against muscle loss and reduce the risk of falls. Impressively, the researchers observed these benefits in women even as late as 12 or more years after menopause.
Conducted by researchers from the Botucatu Medical School in Sao Paulo State University, Brazil, the study was designed as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. This means the patients were randomly assigned to either the supplement group or the placebo group and that, during the trial, neither the patients nor the researchers knew who was in which group. A total of 160 postmenopausal women took part in the trial, with 80 being assigned to each group. The women in the supplement group received 1000IU per day of vitamin D in its cholecalciferol form (vitamin D3), chosen because of its especially high bioavailability.
After 9 months the researchers found the women receiving the vitamin D had experienced a 25.3 percent increase in their muscle strength. In contrast, the women in the placebo group had lost 6.8 percent of their lean muscle mass. Notably, therefore, compared to those who received the supplements, women who took the placebos were also found to be nearly twice as likely to have had falls. Following the trial, the researchers concluded that supplementation with vitamin D had provided significant increases in muscle strength and protection against loss of lean muscle mass.
As striking as these findings are, however, the fact is that women benefit from proper micronutrient supplementation at all stages of life. A woman’s body needs extra nutritional support not only during or after menopause but also in physiological transitions such as puberty, menstruation, pregnancy and lactation. Women are also affected by different health problems than men and are more often diagnosed with autoimmune diseases and other conditions such as arthritis, osteoporosis and depression. In order to take a truly preventive approach to healthcare, appropriate supplementation should ideally therefore commence in a woman’s childhood and continue, varied according to her particular requirements, throughout life.
However old we are, the desire to enjoy optimum wellbeing and live to a ripe old age is both natural and doable. Moreover, and as the Brazilian study demonstrates, it is never too late to begin making the right nutritional choices for improving one’s health. As the scientific work conducted at the Dr. Rath Research Institute has proven, many chronic health conditions are now preventable and can successfully be controlled using the Cellular Medicine approach. With the latest natural health research findings increasingly disproving many of conventional medicine’s assumptions about old age and disease, the way is now open for all women, young and old, to take advantage of them.