Daily Vitamin Could Help Prevent Alzheimer’s

Could one tiny pill that contains what‘s already considered an essential vitamin help improve memory and potentially reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia?

British researchers think so. The study, which was published last year, showed that vitamin B helped reduce brain shrinkage, which is linked to memory loss. The latest from this study presented at the British Science Festival in Bradford showed that it actually did help prevent the memory from fading. The Daily Mail has more:

Pensioners who took high doses of the vitamin once a day for two years did 70 percent better on a simple memory test than those who did not.

The supplement, which costs just 10p, [less than 20 cents in the United States], is described as the ‘first glimmer of hope’ in the battle to find a drug that slows or stops the development of the disease.

. . .

The Oxford University scientists say the pill prevents the memory lapses that can be a precursor to dementia. They also found it cut brain shrinkage linked to memory loss by up to 500 per cent.

The trial was conducted with 260 people who were considered to have the precursors to Alzheimer’s — mild lapses in memory. They were given a combo pill that included very high levels of vitamins B6, 9 and 12. By extremely high, they mean much higher than what naturally occurs in food:

For instance, the dose of B12 was up to 300 times higher than could be obtained by eating foods rich in the vitamin, such as bananas, whole grains and meat.

Watch NBC’s report of when initial study results were published last year:

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The Daily Telegraph reported study author Celeste de Jager of Oxford University as stressing the importance of talking to a doctor before taking high levels of vitamin B:

“. . . people shouldn’t rush out and empty the shelves of vitamin B tablets. More research is needed to establish whether it has benefits for people without existing memory problems, and if it could prevent dementia.”

High levels of vitamins can lead existing cancer to get worse and can interfere with medication, if not cleared by a doctor.

According to the National Institute of Health, the daily recommended intake for vitamin B12, for the average person, is 2.4 micrograms a day. For some perspective, most fortified cereal has about 6 micrograms of the vitamin, whereas One-A-Day daily vitamin for men, for example, has 18 micrograms of vitamin B12. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, but that number is expected to jump to 16 million by 2050. Alzheimer’s is also the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.