Friday, April 04, 2008
Women's Health
Women who take vitamin D and calcium supplements, even for a short time, appear to lower their risk of stress fractures, researchers have found.
The researchers followed the health of more than 5,000 female Navy recruits participating in eight weeks of basic training. Members of one group were given 2,000 milligrams of calcium and 800 IU of vitamin D a day, while the other group received placebos.
Earlier studies had found that a lack of these nutrients makes people, especially women, more susceptible to stress fractures, which can be very painful and lead to permanent disability. But the researchers, who presented their findings at a recent Orthopaedic Research Society conference, did not expect to see a big difference between the two groups, especially given how short basic training is.
“We were very surprised," said Joan Lappe, the principal investigator in the study.
Women in the study who took the supplements were about 25 percent less likely to have a stress fracture than those in the other group. If the findings were applied to all 14,000 women who passed through the training camp over the two years of the study, the researchers said, about 130 fractures could have been prevented.