Could taking vitamin B save your memory in old age?

Experts have been discussing whether taking Vitamin B daily can really help with memory loss in old age following a recent university of Oxford study.

The study made headway towards proving that Vitamin B helps keep an amino acid called homocysteine at a healthy level. Raised homocysteine has been linked with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s and a faster rate of brain shrinkage in the elderly. It is thought that ‘homocysteine levels’ could come as common place a term and as important as Cholesterol or blood sugar levels.

There has been some debate over whether or not taking vitamins in large quantities can be harmful to your health, in this study though participants took large amounts of Vitamin B over a 2 year period and none saw any adverse side effects suggesting such claims are unfounded, certainly in the case of Vitamin B.

‘Everyone agrees that a healthy balanced diet is the best way to prevent many chronic diseases like diabetes, heart attacks and Alzheimer’s,’ says Professor Refsum, co-author of the study and a leading homocysteine researcher at the University of Oslo.

Vitamin B12 sources include meat and fish; folic acid and B6 are found in asparagus, lentils, most beans, and leafy green vegetables.

‘The problem is that as you get older it becomes more difficult to get the recommended amounts. While getting enough of the other vitamin Bs is not a problem if you eat reasonably well, B12 can be tricky as you get older because you don’t absorb it as efficiently’, says the study’s co-author, Professor David Smith of the Department of Pharmacology at Oxford.

‘Vegetarians who don’t have any milk or fish are also likely to become deficient. I believe it makes sense for those groups to take a supplement.’

Often, a lot of prescription drugs prescribed for conditions more prominent in the elderly, such as Losec (omeprazole) which is used to treat heartburn, also contribute to restricting the levels of vitamin B absorbed from the diet. The same doesn’t apply though when that vitamin B comes from supplements.

Professor Smith says ‘There is evidence that the elderly don’t eat the right food to keep their B vitamin levels up and it is likely that homocysteine rises naturally with age and at the same time we become less efficient at absorbing B vitamins from the diet.’ This suggests that a vitamin B supplement is the only way to ensure homocysteine levels are kept low.