Vitamin D

Vitamin D deficiency symptoms explained: the top 9 warning signs

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Vitamin D deficiency Aurora Geib – 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.

The sunshine vitamin

It’s actually hard to get enough vitamin D from a normal diet. This is why many people choose to consume liquid calcium with magnesium and other supplements that include vitamin D. It’s found at the highest concentration in fatty fish such as tuna, mackerel and salmon. Some mushrooms are also high in D, and their level of the vitamin actually increases when exposed to ultraviolet light. Continue reading →

Boost Your Mood and Improve Your Health With Vitamin D

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vitamin DJennifer Giustra-Kozek, LPC, NBCC – Are you or someone you love suffering from depression or an autoimmune disorder? It appears vitamin D deficiency may be to blame.

Vitamin D is essential for proper immune functioning and alleviation of inflammation. The beneficial effects of vitamin D on protective immunity are due in part to its impact on the innate immune system and has numerous effects on cells within the immune system. 

Vitamin D is also involved in maintaining the proper balance of several minerals in the body. And, it helps to ward off the flu and many viruses and treat them. The latest research links vitamin D deficiency to many disease states. These disease states include cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease, depression, arthritis, and just about every other degenerative disease. Continue reading →

Vitamin D: A Hormone Critical to Health

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vitamin dAli Le Vere – Vitamin D insufficiency is a pandemic affecting nearly half of people worldwide, while one billion people are classified as vitamin D deficient (1). Hypovitaminosis D, or vitamin D deficiency, represents an independent predictor of total mortality in the general population, and conversely, vitamin D supplementation has been illustrated to be protective against mortality (1).

Vitamin D enhances absorption of dietary calcium and phosphorus by 30-40% and 80%, respectively, but its physiological functions extend well-beyond mineral assimilation and balance (2, 3). Vitamin D is known as a pleiotropic hormone, meaning that it elicits diverse and multi-faceted effects. In fact, local vitamin D production governs the expression of up to 200 genes (4). That receptors for vitamin D are found in so many organ systems, including the muscles, intestines, pancreas, and nervous system, illustrates its expansive and far-reaching effects (5). Continue reading →

Fifteen Important Facts To Know About Vitamin D

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Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer,and even effects diabetes and obesity.

Vitamin D is perhaps the single most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition. That’s probably because it’s free: your body makes it when sunlight touches your skin.

Fifteen facts that are important to know about vitamin D and sunlight exposure:

vitamin d1. Vitamin D is produced by your skin in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight.

2. The healing rays of natural sunlight cannot penetrate glass. So you don’t generate vitamin D when sitting in your car or home.

3. It is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.

4. A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to get minimum levels into their diet.

5. The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D. Canada, the UK and most U.S. States are far from the equator. Continue reading →

Vitamin D Deficiency Substantially Increases Risk Of Dementia

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“While earlier studies have suggested that a lack of the sunshine vitamin is linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, this study found that people with very low vitamin D levels were more than twice as likely to develop any kind of dementia.” Natural Blaze

morningSunVitamin D deficiency is associated with a substantially increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in older people, according to the most robust study of its kind ever conducted.

An international team, led by Dr David Llewellyn at the University of Exeter Medical School, found that study participants who were severely Vitamin D deficient were more than twice as likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The team studied elderly Americans who took part in the Cardiovascular Health Study. They discovered that adults in the study who were moderately deficient in vitamin D had a 53 per cent increased risk of developing dementia of any kind, and the risk increased to 125 per cent in those who were severely deficient. Similar results were recorded for Alzheimer’s disease, with the moderately deficient group 69 per cent more likely to develop this type of dementia, jumping to a 122 per cent increased risk for those severely deficient.

The study was part-funded by the Alzheimer’s Association, and is published in August 6 2014 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. It looked at 1,658 adults aged 65 and over, who were able to walk unaided and were free from dementia, cardiovascular disease and stroke at the start of the study. The participants were then followed for six years to investigate who went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Continue reading →