Vitamin D Benefits & Signs of Deficiency
The human body can produce vitamin D when exposed to the sun. You can avoid vitamin D deficiency symptoms by boosting your intake of the vitamin through diet and supplementation. Checking your vitamin d levels is a great way to know how much a deficiency, may be impacting your overall health.
Vitamin D is important for many reasons. These include maintaining healthy teeth and bones. The vitamin also protects from various health conditions like type 1 diabetes. The benefits of vitamin d for fighting infection and disease are never-ending.
Vitamin D is a misnomer because it is not a vitamin. Instead, it is a precursor of a hormone called prohormone.
The human body is not capable of producing vitamins on its own. Thus, you need to get them from your diet. In contrast, the body can create vitamin D. you can also increase your intake of vitamin D through diet and exposure to the sun.
This post will discuss the main benefits of vitamin D, the effects on the body of vitamin D deficiency, ways to boost your vitamin D intake, as well as good dietary sources of the vitamin.
Table of Contents
Vitamin D Benefits
As mentioned, the body produces vitamin D during sun exposure. The vitamin plays many crucial roles in the body.
The following are the main benefits of Vitamin D:
- Healthy Bones – Vitamin D is important in regulating and maintaining the body’s calcium and phosphorus levels. This, in turn, is crucial for keeping the bones healthy.
The body needs the vitamin to help the intestines in stimulating and absorbing calcium, as well as in reclaiming calcium excreted by the kidneys.
Children with vitamin D deficiency are at risk of contracting rickets, a condition that softens the bones, resulting in severe bow-leggedness. In adults, deficiency in the vitamin may result in osteomalacia that leads to muscular weakness and poor bone density.
Osteoporosis may also result from having insufficient vitamin D intake. According to studies, more than 53M people in the US are either at an increased risk or are already seeking treatment.
- Lower Risk of Contracting Flu – According to some studies, the vitamin offers protection from the influenza virus, although other studies tend to believe that vitamin D has no such effect on flu risk. Thus, further research is necessary to prove the claim of the vitamin’s protective effect on the body against the flu virus.
- Blood Sugar Level Management and Diabetes Prevention – Symptoms of diabetes result from insulin deficiency or the lack of insulin secretion resulting from an increase in insulin resistance. Calcium is vital for the secretion of insulin. Vitamin D promotes proper absorption and utilization of calcium that results in proper control of insulin secretion.
Fighting Cancer & Diabetes
According to a study published in the Current Diabetes Reviews in 2015, the replacement of vitamin D is beneficial for type 2 diabetes in terms of incidence, complications, and control of the disease. More evidence also links the lack of vitamin D to diabetes.
- Protection Against Cancer – Symptoms of deficiency of vitamin D have been linked to heightened cancer development risks, specifically breast, prostate, and colon cancers.
In research published in the Frontiers of Endocrinology, it was found that the vitamin influences factors that contribute to the growth of a tumor, as well as in cell differentiation and apoptosis. It was also established that increased exposure to sunlight and vitamin D circulation are linked to the lower incidence and mortality in numerous cancer types.
- Heart Disease Prevention – A growing number of studies link vitamin D deficiency to higher risks of cardiovascular disease because of its involvement in the regulation of cholesterol levels, inflammation, and blood pressure.
Fighting Diseases
According to research conducted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, vitamin D-deficient people are at higher risk of dying from coronary heart disease, hypertension, and other heart-related disorders.
- Immune System Enhancement – Vitamin D helps in the replication of healthy cells. It also plays a vital role in defending against autoimmune disorders and less severe ailments like colds and flu.
Human immune cells contain vitamin D receptors. It has been proven that the vitamin helps avoid excessive or prolonged inflammatory responses. Inflammation usually triggers a lot of autoimmune disorders and chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, IBS and other digestive issues, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.
- Hormone Regulation and Mood Improvement – Because vitamin D is a hormone that affects brain functioning, deficiency in the vitamin triggers mood disorders such as seasonal affective disorder, depression, anxiety, insomnia, as well as severe mood problems occurring during PMS.
Low vitamin D levels also interfere with the production of estrogen and testosterone. This leads to imbalances that cause various unwanted symptoms.
- Improvement in Memory, Concentration, and Learning – Vitamin D affects your decision-making ability, concentration, and capacity to retain information. Students with insufficient vitamin D levels tend to perform poorly on standard exams, have poor decision-making skills, and find it challenging to complete tasks requiring attention and focus. Some studies link low vitamin D levels to multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.
Causes of Vitamin D Deficiency
Most people get 50 to 90% of their vitamin D from casual exposure to sunlight. The human skin produces the vitamin when touched by the sun’s ultraviolet B. It can be assumed that one of the major reasons for the insufficient vitamin D production in most people is today’s modern and predominantly indoor lifestyle.
Having said that here are the most common causes of vitamin D deficiency symptoms:
- Lack of Sunlight Exposure – In the past, people spent much more time outdoors, working and doing errands outside. Things are different today. Children spend practically their entire waking hours indoors – surfing the net, watching TV, and playing video games. Adults, on the other hand, work mostly indoors and exercise in gyms. They rest at home during their free time, where they don’t get enough sunshine.
With all your time indoors, don’t be surprised if you don’t get enough vitamin D from the sun, just like billions of other people worldwide.
Vitamin D in the Skin
Your vitamin D system starts in the skin and not from the nutrients you get from food. While vitamin D food sources can boost the levels of the vitamin to avoid deficiency, the sun provides a more effective way to fill your vitamin D requirements.
- Excessive Use of Sunscreens – As it is, you may not be staying outdoors long enough to get some exposure to the sun. When you do, you use sunscreen almost 100% of the time. After all, doctors encourage using sunscreen to prevent skin cancer, which has become prevalent in recent years – both in adults and children – even during winter.
When you use sunblock SPF 8, you practically lower your body’s ability to produce vitamin D by 90%. Using a sunblock that has a higher SPF such as 30, which doctors usually recommend, you further lower your body’s vitamin D-producing capability by as much as 99%. This aggravates your deficiency because even as you stay outdoors, your body is prevented from converting sunshine into vitamin D.
What Are the Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency?
Various scientific studies have proven that deficiency in vitamin D has links to various health problems, including:
- Heart disease
- Osteoporosis
- Hypertension
- Autoimmune diseases
- Cancer
- Arthritis
- Insomnia
- Asthma
- Multiple sclerosis
- Diabetes
- Autism
- Psoriasis
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic pain
Should I Get Tested?
People with the above health conditions should be tested for vitamin D deficiency, and so are people who manifest the following symptoms:
- Weakness
- Depression
- Chronic fatigue
- Anxiety
- Trouble sleeping
- Weakened immune system
- Broken or weak bones
- Swelling and inflammation
There is only one way to determine if you lack sufficient levels of vitamin D, and that is by having your doctor perform 25-hydroxy vitamin D testing or simply 25(OH) D test. The results will reveal if you are deficient and the severity of the deficiency.
Keep the following figures in mind when getting the results of your blood test and vitamin D levels:
- 50+ – good level
- 30 to 50 – supplementing with vitamin D may be necessary; spending more time out in the sun and adding vitamin D sources into your diet may help
- 30 – very deficient; immediate action needs to be taken to bring the numbers up.
Consult your physician on how you can supplement your vitamin D levels in case you have very low levels or severely deficient based on the test results.
Other kinds of vitamin D tests show slightly elevated or normal levels, but are inaccurate and hide a severe deficiency. The 25(OH) D test is, by far, the most accurate in determining your actual levels of vitamin D.
What is the Difference Between Vitamin D and D3?
The difference between vitamin d and d3 is mainly their absorption rate. There are two kinds of supplemental vitamin D: D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol). The vitamin D precursor is found both in animal and plant products. However, animal-derived Vitamin D3 products are deemed to be more beneficial and absorbable.
This is because man-made vitamin D is produced in two ways.
- Vitamin D2 is made by irradiating yeast as well as other molds (called vegetarian vitamin D2)
- Vitamin D3 is created by irradiating animal cholesterol and oils
The type that the human body naturally makes is known as cholecalciferol or vitamin D3. The body can convert some vitamin D2 for use in bodily functions, but the human body prefers and can utilize D3 in a much more effective manner.
Unfortunately, most dietary supplements and vitamin D-fortified food items often contain ergocalciferol (vitamin D2), which is not as absorbable or convertible into what the body requires.
Animal-derived D3 products, particularly from the cholesterol content in these products is the most proximate to what natural sunlight produces in people when the skin starts to convert UV light. D3 is said to convert 500x faster than its D2 counterpart, and it is estimated to be 4x more effective in people.
Vitamin D Derived from the Sun
A lot of people think that the best way to fill their vitamin D requirements is by eating fish, taking supplements (for example, cod liver oil), and drinking milk. Although these are good dietary sources, they pale in comparison to sun exposure in terms of vitamin D absorption.
When you sit under sunlight without sunscreen for about 10 minutes, you will absorb about 10,000 units of D vitamin. But, bear in mind that the figure may vary from one person to another, depending on the skin tone.
How much can you get?
Melanin, a substance that helps determine your skin color, is released when you are exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The less melanin your body has, the lighter your skin tone will be. The reverse is true when your body has higher levels of melanin.
The more sun exposure you get, the more melanin your skin gets. Up to 90 to 95% of the average person’s vitamin D is derived from casual exposure to the sun.
The volume of melanin in the skin affects how much vitamin D your body will produce. Thus, the fairer your skin color, the more efficient you can make vitamin D.
The cholesterol found in the skin helps convert melanin to a usable D vitamin that is distributed to the different parts of the body. Thus, some people experience a moderate to the slight increase in cholesterol levels during the winter when sun exposure is limited, and people often spend time indoors where the temperature is warmer.
Dietary and Other Sources of Vitamin D
While you can get D vitamin from food with vitamin D, your best bet to avoid symptoms of deficiency of vitamin D is to get enough exposure to sunlight.
According to research, however, consuming food rich in vitamin D can also help you fill up your requirement for the vitamin. Thus, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to add these natural vitamin D sources in your regular diet.
So, what are vitamin D foods?
- Carp fish
- Halibut
- Eel
- Mackerel
- Salmon
- UV light-exposed maitake mushrooms
- Whitefish
- UV light-exposed Portobello mushrooms
- Rainbow trout
- Swordfish
- Sardines
- Cod liver oil
- Milk
- Eggs
- Tuna
How Much Sunlight Do You Need?
Spend around 10 to 20 minutes in the sun, unexposed, daily. You’ll get around 1,000 to 10,000 IUs. It is a wide range because the figure depends on where you live, the time of year, as well as how exposed your skin is. If you have a light skin tone, you will require less time. But, if your skin tone is darker, or you live farther north like Boston, you will require about 30 minutes of the sun during summer just to get around 1,000 IUs of vitamin D.
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Originally posted 2020-01-21 06:44:00.
Megan Santiago
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