The lost weight vitamin
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Want to save money on vitamins? One option could be to lose weight. Researchers say overweight or obese women in a diet-and-exercise program who lost more than 15 percent of their weight gained 8 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood.
Caitlin Mason of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center:
"That's an amount that could be equivalent to taking a multivitamin with about 800 international units of vitamin D in it, for a few months.'' (8 seconds)
This is about double what is currently recommended. But Americans - especially those who are overweight or obese - tend to be low on vitamin D, which helps to build bone strength and may help against diabetes and cancer.
The study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.