Which vitamins are most important for seniors?
Well, the two I would focus on are vitamin D and vitamin B12. Vitamin D is the most common vitamin deficiency in America. If you live in New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, even Tokyo and London, even if you were out in the sun all day long during the winter time you get no vitamin D made. Remember, vitamin D is made by the effect of sun on your skin and if you live above latitude 40 from December to about March, you make no vitamin D up there. So you need to take supplemental vitamin D. And now we're beginning to know that you need to take as much as a thousand international units per day. So I recommend that for seniors. It's very important for a number of processes. It helps prevent bone problems, it also helps arthritis, and also helps prevent certain cancers. The second one is B12. As we get older, we lose the secretion of stomach acids, called acorhidrea, that's the technical name. What happens then is our stomachs aren't making enough acid and then bacteria starts creeping into the stomach from the small intestines and when you eat food with vitamin B12 they gobble up the B12 and you become B12 deficient. What can you do? What can happen if you B12 deficient? You can develop anemia and even worse you can develop a thing that looks just like Alzheimer's disease. How much do you need? About 1000 micrograms a day of vitamin B12 if your older and have this loss of acid.
