Vitamin D is a hot seller in the supplement aisles, but it won’t help you ward off or recover faster from the common cold in adults.
That’s according to a study in the October 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trial, 322 healthy men and women age 18 or older received either vitamin D pills or a placebo for 18 months, including two winter seasons. During that time, they also answered monthly questionnaires about their health and contacted researchers whenever they experienced cold symptoms.
There were 593 colds in the vitamin D group, and 611 in the placebo group, not a significant difference, according to the team led by researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
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