Vitamin D – Why this Vitamin (actually a hormone) is The Master Key to Optimal Health

“Why we should be under sunshine more”

There are many newly discovered benefits of the “sunshine vitamin” published on a regular basis these days. There were 33,000 published (and thousands of new publication every year) papers on benefits of vitamin D.

Vitamin D Dose Recommendations
Age Dosage
Below 5 35 units per pound per day
Age 5 - 10 2500 units
Adults 5000 units
Pregnant Women 5000 units
Blood level is so wide and the so called normal is lumpsum of those who very sick in 95% of population. The normal level is not necessary optimum level for health. Furthermore, there is no way to know if the above recommendations are correct. The ONLY way to know is to test your blood. You might need 4-5 times the amount recommended above. Ideally your blood level of 25-OH-D should be 60ng/ml.

 

What Makes Vitamin D so Special?

First, it’s important to realize that vitamin D is not “just a vitamin,” but rather the only known substrate for a potent, pleiotropic (meaning it produces multiple effects), repair and maintenance steroid hormone that serves multiple gene-regulatory functions in your body.

Each cell in your body has its own DNA library that contains information needed to deal with virtually every kind of stimulus it may encounter, and the master key to enter this library is activated vitamin D.

For example, memory ductile cells in the breast need vitamin D to access DNA that enables the response to estrogen.

So naturally, without sufficient amounts of vitamin D, your cells cannot access their DNA libraries and their functions are thereby impaired.

This is why vitamin D functions in so many different tissues, and affects such a large number of different diseases and health conditions. So far, scientists have found about 3,000 genes that are upregulated by vitamin D.

Receptors that respond to the vitamin have been found in almost every type of human cell, from your brain to your bones. And researchers keep finding health benefits from vitamin D in virtually every area they look.

Vitamin D Deficiency make you unhealthy

Just one example of an important gene that vitamin D up-regulates is your ability to fight infections, including the flu. It produces over 200 anti microbial peptides, the most important of which is cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum antibiotic.

At least five studies show an inverse association between lower respiratory tract infections and 25(OH)D levels.  That is, the higher your vitamin D level, the lower your risk of contracting colds, flu, and other respiratory tract infections:

  1.   A 2007 studysuggests higher vitamin D status enhances your immunity to microbial infections. They found that subjects with vitamin D deficiency had significantly more days of absence from work due to respiratory infection than did control subjects.
  2.   A 2009 studyon vitamin D deficiency in newborns with acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) confirmed a strong, positive correlation between newborns’ and mother’s vitamin D levels. Over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state. (USA data)

Researchers recommend that all mothers’ optimize their vitamin D levels during pregnancy, especially in the winter months, to safeguard their baby’s health.

  1. A 2009 analysis of the Third National Health andNutrition Examination Surveyexamined the association between vitamin D levels and recent upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) in nearly 19,000 subjects over the age of 12.

Recent URTI was reported by:

The positive correlation between lower vitamin D levels and increased risk of URTI was even stronger inindividuals with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

  1.   Another 2009 reportin the journal Pediatric Research stated that infants and children appear more susceptible to viral rather than bacterial infections when deficient in vitamin D. And that, based on the available evidence showing a strong connection between vitamin D, infections, and immune function in children, vitamin D supplementation may be a valuable therapy in pediatric medicine.

Optimizing your vitamin D levels can also help you to prevent as many as 16 different types of cancer including pancreatic, lung, breast, ovarian, prostate, and colon cancers.

But perhaps most important to note is that vitamin D can lower your risk of dying from any cause, according to a new European meta-analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2007.

Another group of researchers have calculated that simply increasing levels of vitamin D3 could prevent diseases that claim nearly 1 million lives throughout the world each year, as the widespread vitamin D deficiency seen today is now thought to fuel an astonishingly diverse array of common chronic diseases, such as:

 Cancer  Hypertension  Heart disease
 Autism  Obesity  Rheumatoid arthritis
 Diabetes 1 and 2  Multiple Sclerosis  Crohn’s disease
 Cold & Flu  Inflammatory Bowel Disease  Tuberculosis
 Septicemia  Signs of aging  Dementia
 Eczema & Psoriasis  Insomnia  Hearing loss
 Muscle pain  Cavities  Periodontal disease
 Osteoporosis  Macular degeneration  Reduced C-section risk
 Pre eclampsia  Seizures  Infertility
 Asthma  Cystic fibrosis  Migraines
 Depression  Alzheimer’s disease  Schizophrenia

 

It’s absolutely tragic that dermatologists and sunscreen manufacturers have done such a thorough job of scaring people out of the sun – your optimal source for natural vitamin D. I believe this is one of the major influences that has contributed to the vitamin D epidemic we’re now facing is widespread use of UV blocker.