#102 Why Vitamin D Deficiency Accelerates Brain Aging

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Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.

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4.8 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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Vitamin D is far more than just a vitamin—it's a potent steroid hormone regulating nearly 5% of our genome. Yet, remarkably, up to 70% of Americans aren't getting enough, placing them at increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer's disease. In this episode, I explore compelling new evidence from a study involving over 12,000 participants, demonstrating that vitamin D supplementation can reduce dementia risk by an impressive 40%, protecting even adults with genetic Alzheimer's risk (ApoE4 carriers).

Timestamps:

(00:00) Can vitamin D supplements reduce dementia risk?
(00:46) How common is vitamin D deficiency?
(03:31) What studies reveal about genes, vitamin D, and dementia
(05:44) Does deficiency accelerate brain aging?
(06:45) Can vitamin D supplementation enhance cognitive function?
(08:15) Dementia risk reduction insights from 12,388 adults
(09:58) Why women may benefit most
(10:49) Normal vs. impaired cognition—who benefits more from vitamin D?
(11:21) Do ApoE4 carriers get dementia protection from vitamin D?
(13:00) How mild cognitive impairment affects dementia risk
(13:41) Does the form of vitamin D matter?
(14:11) What are the optimal vitamin D blood levels?
(15:07) What dose corrects deficiency?
(15:33) How vitamin D directly supports brain function

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Show notes are available by clicking here

The study discussed: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia: Effects of sex, APOE, and baseline cognitive status

Transcript

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0:00.0	Dr. Ronda Patrick here. A new study found that vitamin D supplementation was associated with a 40% lower risk of dementia over a decade.
0:09.2	After just five years, 84% of the vitamin D supplement users were dementia-free compared to 68% of the non-users.
0:18.1	This was a study of over 12,000 people. And vitamin D reduced dementia risk by
0:23.2	around 33% in adults with mild cognitive impairment and also had APOE4. This is a key genetic risk
0:30.7	factor for neurodegenerative diseases. Up to 25% of the population has one of these alleles,
0:36.8	and it can double the risk of Alzheimer's disease
0:39.4	if you have one of them. If you have two of these alleles, you can have up to a 10-fold higher risk
0:45.0	of Alzheimer's disease. Vitamin D is not just a vitamin. Vitamin D gets converted into a steroid hormone
0:52.5	that regulates over a thousand genes in our body.
0:56.4	It enters the nucleus of our cells and it regulates, it activates and turns on or it suppresses
1:02.5	and turns off up to nearly 5% of the protein encoding human genome.
1:07.8	This is very relevant because up to 70% of Americans fall into a range known as
1:12.9	deficient or insufficient. So almost 30% of Americans actually are vitamin D deficient. They have
1:19.3	levels of 25 hydrogacy vitamin D below 20 nanograms per milliliter. The other 40% or so has levels that's known as insufficient. So these are
1:30.3	people that have vitamin D levels above 20 nanograms per milliliter, but they're below 30 nanograms per
1:35.4	milliliter. And there's really a simple solution to avoiding this deficiency and insufficiency,
1:40.7	and that is a vitamin D supplement. Usually people that are vitamin D deficient, if they take around 2 to 4,000 IUs per day,
1:49.8	they can get to a sufficient level.
1:52.4	There's a lot of reasons why vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is so widespread.
1:58.4	That is because we actually make vitamin D in our skin upon exposure from
2:05.2	UV radiation from the sun. So anything that blocks out UVB radiation is also going to
2:12.4	block out the ability to produce vitamin D3 in our skin. That includes sunscreen. It also includes skin
	...

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