Vitamin Power

Here's one more reason to take your vitamins seriously: Vitamin deficiency may well be associated with depression and
dementia in the elderly.

In a study conducted by the National Institute on Aging, disabled women over age 65 with a vitamin B12 deficiency were
twice as likely to suffer from depression as those with a full store of
the vitamin. The report indicates that 27 percent of the women studied who were
severely depressed were deficient in B12, compared to only 17 percent of mildly
depressed women, and 15 percent of the more content participants. It's not clear, however, whether taking vitamin B12 will help
relieve depression in the elderly, warns Brenda Penninx, an
assistant geriatrics professor at the Sticht Center on Aging in North
Carolina and the study's lead author.

In related research, men who took vitamins C and E seemed to have
mental abilities that were superior, on the average, to those men who did
not. The study of 3,300 Japanese-American men, published in Nature,
reinforces growing evidence that antioxidants offer protection against
damage from free radicals—unstable molecules that play a role in more
than 60 health conditions, including the aging process. According to
Kamal Masaki, study author and University of Hawaii associate
geriatrics professor, "antioxidants like vitamins E and C may protect
against vascular dementia by limiting the amount of brain damage that
persists after a stroke."