Healthnotes Newswire — Stroke patients with low blood levels of vitamin D are far more likely to have hip fractures than those patients with normal levels of the vitamin, according to a study published in the July journal Stroke.¹

The authors studied 216 Japanese men and women who had suffered a stroke in the past but were not completely bedridden. Vitamin D levels were measured at the beginning of the study, and patients were followed for two years to determine the incidence of hip fractures.

Over the two years of follow-up, seven of the 88 participants with the most severe vitamin D deficiency suffered a hip fracture. In contrast, none of the 72 patients with sufficient levels of vitamin D fractured a hip during this period.

Osteoporosis is prevalent in the aging population, with as many as 40% of elderly women destined to sustain a fracture in their lifetimes.² Risk of hip fracture is at least twice as high in stroke survivors as in the rest of the population.³ Some of this increase in risk is undoubtedly due to osteoporosis. However, in the majority of stroke victims who suffer a hip fracture, the fracture results from a fall.

While the importance of vitamin D for preventing osteoporosis is well known, it is less well appreciated that maintaining adequate vitamin D levels may help prevent elderly people from falling down. In a double-blind trial of elderly women, supplementing with 800 international units of vitamin D per day for eight weeks significantly reduced “body sway,” a measure of how well someone maintains balance.⁴ More importantly, vitamin D supplementation reduced the number of falls during a one-year follow-up period by 47%.

Vitamin D is produced in the skin upon exposure to sunlight. It is also found in many foods, including fish, liver, and fortified milk. Vitamin D blood levels tend to be low in the elderly population.