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A European study looking at the individual and combined effect of these three might show promise.
It’s called the DO-HEALTH study (presumably D for vitamin D and O for omega-3) and has been led by a professor of ageing from the University of Zurich, but involves a network of researchers from Europe and the US.
Participants were 2157 men and women over 70 (average age 74.9 years, 61.7% women) from seven cities: Zurich, Basel, and Geneva in Switzerland; Toulouse in France; Berlin in Germany; Innsbruck in Austria; and Coimbra in Portugal.
Although about half had experienced a fall in the previous 12 months, they were a healthy bunch. For example, 83% were considered to be doing a moderate to high level of physical activity even before the research began.
The study was conducted over three years and was prompted by the rapid ageing of Europeans. It was thought that if three simple and relatively inexpensive interventions could be shown to improve the health of older people, this would be broadly beneficial.
As we know, vitamin D has a role in bone health, but it’s also inflammatory and supports healthy immunity. Low levels have been linked with cognitive decline.
Omega-3 has been thought to benefit us in a range of ways, including the health of our heart, brain, eyes and joints, although research is mixed.
The DO-HEALTH researchers wanted to investigate the impact of vitamin D, omega-3 and exercise on the risk of fractures, loss of physical functional, blood pressure, cognitive decline, and infection.
Participants were randomly allocated to one of eight groups:
- Vitamin D alone — 2000IU/day
- Omega-3 alone — 1g/day
- Exercise alone — three times a week (e.g. squats, single leg balance, rowing with a band)
- Vitamin D + Omega-3
- Vitamin D + Exercise
- Omega-3 + Exercise
- All three
- Placebo group (sunflower oil capsules and flexibility exercises)
Since 800 IU of vitamin D is the standard daily recommendation in these countries, everyone was able to keep taking that much. Those taking Vitamin D for the study were given an extra 2000 IU. This is well above recommended doses, but the researchers believed they needed this much to produce blood levels of 75nmol/L for fracture prevention.
There are varying ideas about how much vitamin D in our blood is enough. in Australia (and the US and UK) GPs look for at least 50nmol/L, but in these other European countries any reading less than 75 nmol/L is considered insufficient.
The omega-3 came from algae rather than fish because the research team didn’t want participants to know whether they were taking omega-3 or a placebo, and any hint of fishiness would have been a giveaway. One gram was used because one study had shown cardiovascular benefits with that amount.
By 2020 the first results were published. They showed no improvement in fracture risk or cognitive function, but omega-3 seemed to reduce infections — upper respiratory tract infections by 10% and urinary tract infections by an impressive 62%.
Vitamin D reduced infections by 16% among younger participants (aged 70-74) and lowered systolic blood pressure (the top figure in a blood pressure reading) among men by 2.5mm Hg (which isn’t much).
Most participants had sufficient vitamin D at the start of the study though. Results might have been more striking if that hadn’t been the case.
There was no improvement in stroke and heart attack, but an overall reduction in cancer risk of 61% was reported.
In a later analysis of 777 participants’ data the researchers looked at measures of biological ageing. They believe that omega-3 alone can slow ageing and that the three interventions together can make a substantial impact on the way we age.
They’re now repeating that analysis on the rest of the participants’ results to see if the same trends show up. So watch this space.
In the meantime, what can we take away?
The cancer result was strong, but we’d want to see that replicated in other studies before we could assume too much. The same goes for the biological ageing results. There’s no generalised agreement on how to measure that and their techniques are very new.
The study was never likely to show much improvement as a result of exercise given their participants were so fit to start with. It was also only a three-year study, which wasn’t long to try to show major changes in areas such as falls risk or cognitive function, especially with a healthy group in their 70s.
But the infection results were interesting. The bottom line might be a reminder to make sure our vitamin D level and omega-3 intake are up to par given colds, flu, covid, and RSV now seem to be with us all year round.
So is this threesome the key to healthier ageing? Perhaps not entirely but it’s a decent place to start.
Photo Source: Bigstock
