When you think about vitamins and minerals deficiency, you may think about undeveloped or third world countries where food might be scarce. You may think about those who suffer from eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. But did you think that a modest deficiency could ever threaten your longevity? Modest deficiency in vitamins and minerals are all too common in developed nations. In countries such as the U.S. that are known for its availability of food and soaring obesity statistics, this fact is much overlooked and largely ignored.
But as a new study published in the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal reveals, moderate selenium and vitamin K deficiency over time may lead to age-related diseases including cancer, heart disease, and loss of immune or brain function.
Sounds a little serious now, doesn’t it?
“Understanding how best to define and measure optimum nutrition will make the application of new technologies to allow each person to optimize their own nutrition a much more realistic possibility than it is today,” says Joyce C. McCann, study co-author. “If the principles of the theory, as demonstrated for vitamin K and selenium can be generalized to other vitamins and minerals, this may provide the foundation needed.”
McCann and research colleagues of the Nutrition and Metabolism Center at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute in Oakland, California compiled and assessed several general types of scientific evidence. Testing whether selenium-dependant proteins that are essential from an evolutionary perspective are more resistant to selenium deficiency than those less essential, they discovered an astoundingly sophisticated array of mechanisms at cellular and tissue levels. In instances where selenium was limited, these mechanisms protected essential selenium-dependant proteins at the expense of those nonessential. Fascinating, too, was how mutations in selenium-dependant proteins lost on modest selenium deficiency result in traits shared by age-related diseases that include heart disease, cancer, and loss of immune or brain function.
Selenium plays a role in the functioning of the thyroid gland and in every cell requiring thyroid hormone. Dietary selenium stems from nuts, cereals, meat, mushrooms, fish, and eggs, with high levels also founding Brazil nuts, kidney, tuna, crab, and lobster. However, the report supports the daily intake of a multi-vitamin that includes selenium.
Gerald Weissmann, M.D, Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal had this to say: “This paper should settle any debate about the importance of taking a good, complete, multivitamin every day… As this report shows, taking a multivitamin that contains selenium is a good way to prevent deficiencies that, over time, can cause harm in ways that we are just beginning to understand.”
Partial to a particular multivitamin, Methuselites? Comment below!
Reference:
“How Vitamins and Minerals May Prevent Age-Related Diseases.” Science Daily. Science Daily LLC, 31 May 2011. Web. 31 May 2011. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110531115323.htm.