The Many Benefits Of Vitamin D
People most often associate Vitamin D with bone health, but the benefits of Vitamin D extend to nearly all parts of the body. What’s more, deficiency can lead to serious negative consequences. With our modern lifestyle spent more inside the office and home, it can be a challenge to make sure you’re getting enough of this important vitamin. In fact, over 35% of US adults have insufficient levels of Vitamin D in their body. The truth is that we aren’t testing enough for optimal levels in the regular healthcare system, and most people could benefit from increasing their levels through lifestyle and supplementation.
How Do We Get Vitamin D?
To function optimally, the human body needs many essential nutrients. It gets these either through consumption (eating/drinking) or by synthesizing them. In the case of Vitamin D, the best source is sunlight - which stimulates your body to make this important vitamin. However, you can also utilize the Vitamin D in foods. It’s a fat soluble vitamin, which means the best food sources also contain fat like salmon, cod liver oil, beef liver, and egg yolk. You’ll often find Vitamin D supplements suspended in carrier oils for this reason. For many people, a combination of sun exposure and supplementation will be necessary to keep levels optimal, especially in the winter.
What Role Does It Have In The Body?
One of the most important roles of Vitamin D is in the absorption of calcium and phosphorus, some of the building blocks of bone. Severe deficiency leads to diseases like rickets in children and contributes to osteoporosis in older adults. It also has other jobs in the body, like reducing inflammation and supporting the immune system. It’s no coincidence that our Vitamin D levels tend to be lower in the winter, which coincides with cold and flu season.
Newer research shows that Vitamin D insufficiency may also play a role in mood disorders like depression and anxiety. In addition, it helps to modulate biological processes like cell growth and glucose metabolism, suggesting that it affects your ability to maintain a healthy weight.
Achieving Optimal Levels Of Vitamin D
While there is some controversy surrounding the standardization of optimal blood levels of Vitamin D, we do have some lower and upper limits that give a good range of sufficiency. We like to see labs in the 50-100 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) range. Closer to 100 is going to be more optimal, and below 50 will likely need supplementation.
If you think you might be low in Vitamin D or have tested low in the past, schedule an appointment with us to discuss it. We can order labs and get you on the path to Vitamin D optimization to improve your health and wellbeing.