Holistic Wellness for Life North of 50

Lately, vitamin D is showing up in the news more often. It used to be the ho-hum vitamin that you got from drinking your milk and playing out in the sunshine. Apparently, this vitamin is much more important to our health and has many previously unknown attributes that can enhance your holistic wellness. Vitamin D is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight. Many factors including season, skin coloration, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis in the skin, and it is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet.

As civilization and the industrialization enabled humans to work indoors and wear more clothes when outdoors, these cultural changes reduced natural production of vitamin D and caused deficiency diseases. In many countries, foods such as milk, yogurt, margarine, oil spreads, breakfast cereal, pastries, and bread are fortified with vitamin D₂ and/or vitamin D₃, to minimize the risk of vitamin D deficiency. In the United States and Canada, for example, fortified milk typically provides 100 IU per glass, or a quarter of the estimated adequate intake for adults over age 50. Fatty fish, such as salmon, herring, catfish and sardines are natural sources of vitamin D. Other natural sources include: fish liver oils, such as cod liver oil, whole eggs, cooked beef liver, and UV-irradiated mushrooms. In the United States (U.S.), the 100% Daily Value used for product labels is 400 IU/day.

The easiest way to tell if you are getting enough of the vitamin is have a blood calcidiol level test at the doctor’s office. If the test results are not in specification, then you can increase your level with a higher dose of supplementation. Your doctor can recommend an appropriate level.

Deficiency of vitamin D can result from a number of factors: inadequate intake along with inadequate sunlight (UVB) exposure, disorders that limit its absorption from the gastrointestinal tract, conditions that impair conversion of vitamin D into active metabolites, such as liver or kidney disorders and body characteristics such as skin color and body fat. Rarely, deficiency can result from a number of hereditary disorders. Deficiency results in impaired bone mineralization, and leads to bone softening diseases including:

• Rickets, a childhood disease characterized by slowed growth, and deformity, of the long bones. Rickets was first described in the 17th century. Prior to fortifying milk products with vitamin D, rickets was a major public health problem. In the United States, the fortification of milk with 10 micrograms (400 IU) of vitamin D per quart in the 1930s led to a dramatic decline in the number of rickets cases.

• Osteoporosis, a condition characterized by reduced bone mineral density and increased bone fragility.

New research is showing low levels of vitamin D may also be linked to an increased susceptibility to several chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure, tuberculosis, cancer, periodontal disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, seasonal affective disorder , elevated VLDL triglycerides, peripheral artery disease, cognitive impairment which includes memory loss, and several autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes. There is also an association between low vitamin D levels and Parkinson’s disease, but whether Parkinson’s causes low vitamin D levels, or whether low vitamin D levels play a role in the development of Parkinson’s disease has not been established.

Research indicates that vitamin D may play a role in preventing or reversing coronary disease. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increase in high blood pressure and cardiovascular risk. Numerous observational studies show this link, but no randomized trial has proven the impact of vitamin D supplementation. When researchers looked at the vitamin D levels, blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factors of  people, of an average age of 59 years for 5 years, they found that those people with low levels of vitamin D had a 62% higher risk of a cardiovascular event than those with normal vitamin D levels. The issue of vitamin D in heart health has not yet been settled. Exercise may account for some of the benefit attributed to vitamin D, since vitamin D levels are generally higher in physically active persons.

Many recent studies are showing a relationship between cancer and the vitamin D hormone, calcitriol. A search of primary and review medical literature published between 1970 and 2009 found an increasing amount of research that seems to support the idea that vitamin D has significant protective effects against the development of cancer. This research looked at the association between sun exposure, serum levels of 25(OH)D, and consumption of vitamin D and risk of developing and/or surviving cancer. All of the studies looked at show a beneficial correlation between vitamin D intake and prevention of many cancers; colon, breast and ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate.

So vitamin D is much more important to our health and wellness than we thought. All of the recent findings are mostly of a preliminary nature and with more studies we may find more benefits to taking an adequate amount of vitamin D every day. I usually take a 1000IU supplemental tablet a day. Please consult your medical specialist on how much is healthy for you.

Be well.

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