One Major Side Effect of Caffeine on Your Vitamin D Levels, New Study Says
If you've been tuned into the recent conversation about the many benefits of Vitamin D, there's an important update. A new study suggests that if you regularly count on a caffeinated pick-me-up, that caffeine intake could interfere with your body's ability to absorb Vitamin D. Here's what you should know.
Medical researchers in China and Brazil recently teamed up to conduct a study that will soon be published in the International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research. The study was predicated by prior research which had concluded that caffeine consumption was linked with a decrease in the creation of Vitamin D receptors.
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To investigate further, this study examined nutrition data collected from over 13,000 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2005 and 2006. Then, adjusting for a number of other health-related variables, they examined the clinical odds that Vitamin D deficiency is based on caffeine intake.
Indeed, the researchers concluded that the more caffeine individuals drank, the greater their odds of experiencing a Vitamin D deficiency. In the study's abstract, the authors clearly state: "Higher dietary intakes of caffeine were associated with [Vitamin D] deficiency in a representative sample of the American population."
It's important to note that the researchers qualify this finding by adding that further investigation may be called for to determine whether caffeine actually causes this Vitamin D deficiency. At this time, it's also not clear what the benchmarks were that distinguished healthy caffeine levels from those that were associated with lower Vitamin D levels.
Another question may be how caffeine affects Vitamin D levels in older individuals, as the data used in this study was collected from individuals between the ages of 30 and 47 years.
How can you tell if you're drinking too much coffee? Experts have offered a few recommendations in order to spot the signs that you're overdoing it.
And, for more of the latest about the power of Vitamin D, keep reading:
