Knee Cartilage and Vitamin D

I'm back to running 12 to 15 miles a week and I've been just a tad surprised that my knees have not been hurting non-stop but I've given all the thanks to my knee lubrication in 2008. However increasing my Vitamin D intake might well have been helping as well.

The research, in Tasmania, Australia, looked at men and women aged 51 to 79 years with an average of 61 years. This is right in my age range and hence the interest.

The paper has the title Serum levels of vitamin D, sunlight exposure, and knee cartilage loss in older adults: The Tasmanian older adult cohort study

Dr. Changhai Ding is a long time researcher on cartilage, osteoarthritis and knees (look at his long list of research papers) said "Cartilage loss is the hallmark of osteoarthritis."

I've increased my Vitamin D intake up to 3,000 IU's a day and hopefully this has increased the level of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25 OHD] . The research was carried out in Tasmania, Australia and maybe that was why the mean 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25 OHD] baseline was 52.6 nmol/L - the sunny climate gave high Vitamin D levels. In northern climates a Vitamin D level of 30 nmol/L and up is seen as normal.

The next thing to do is to get my Vitamin D level measured to find out if my less painful knees are related to much higher Vitamin D levels (bearing in mind my levels were around 30 nmol/L in April 2009).