“While our skin does manufacture some of the vitamin D that we need daily, sun exposure alone is usually not enough. Factors such as the time of year, the angle of the sun, cloud cover, pollution levels and even the use of sunscreen can greatly limit the amount of D made by our skin.” ~A. Geib
NaturalNews ~ The importance of vitamin D is well known. As far back as the 1930s, doctors first recognized the link between a vitamin D deficiency and the skeletal disease called rickets. Rickets causes a softening of the bones and teeth. Even if someone’s diet has adequate levels of calcium, without enough vitamin D to properly control calcium and phosphate levels in the blood stream, demineralization of the bones can take place. The symptoms of rickets include bowed legs, bone pain, dental problems, a widening of the wrists, frequent bone fractures and skull deformities.
Because rickets is seldom seen in first-world countries, it’s easy to think that vitamin D deficiencies are a thing of the past. However, new research has recently shed light on other, more subtle, symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency. Many illnesses which, at first glance, seem totally unrelated to something as physically obvious as rickets actually may have their roots in a lack of vitamin D.
Just what is vitamin D?
The term vitamin D, according to the Mayo Clinic’s Drugs and Supplements site (1), actually refers to several different forms of the vitamin, including D2, which comes from our diet, and D3, which is manufactured by our skin when exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D’s main purpose in the body is to regulate blood levels of calcium and phosphorous.
