Vitamin D and You

Vitamin D is often neglected because it is surmised that the human body makes enough of this vitamin by simple exposure to the sun. However, it is being discovered that many people are seriously deficient in vitamin D levels. This is vitally important because recent studies are showing that vitamin D has the potential to improve your daily mood, control your blood sugar levels, and regulate your blood pressure.

 

While studies like these are great sources of information for all of us such information is particularly important for folks suffering from Type 2 diabetes. Diabetes affects approximately ten percent of the people in the United States but that number is expected to grow phenomenally to twenty-five percent by the year 2050. The effects of Vitamin D on daily moods are particularly important for women because approximately 25 percent of female diabetics suffer depression to some degree.

 

The same factors that may deprive diabetics of the ability to take in enough Vitamin D can affect anyone whether they are diabetic or not. These factors include a limited intake of foods containing Vitamin D, obesity (which causes more Vitamin D to be stored in fat thereby depriving it of its ability to circulate in the bloodstream), lack of exposure to the sun, inborn genetic factors, and inflammatory states within the body such as autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and cancer.

 

Remember, inflammatory states within the body may be subclinical and do not present obvious symptoms. Therefore, just because you do not have an autoimmune disease, diabetes, or cancer you should not automatically assume you do not have inflammatory processes operating within your body. On the contrary, because the typical American diet fosters the formation of inflammation within the body it can be assumed that most people living in the United States have an inflammatory state existing within their body thereby making them susceptible to not being able of taking in enough Vitamin D.

 

The good news is that Vitamin D supplementation can improve blood sugar control by increasing insulin secretion from the pancreas and increasing the ability of insulin receptor sites on cells to improve their insulin uptake capability.

 

Vitamin D helps in the absorption of calcium, an essential nutrient, which may aid in the reduction of the incidence of osteoporosis. It is often suggested that Vitamin D and 1200 mg of elemental calcium be taken daily in conjunction with a well balanced diet to assist in warding off osteoporosis.  But how much Vitamin D should you take every day? The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine recommends consuming 600 IU of Vitamin D daily for people 19 to 70 years of age while folks age 71 and older should consume 800 IU of Vitamin D daily.

 

However, studies showing that Vitamin D reduces inflammation and improves blood sugar control have used daily doses of 4,000 IU of Vitamin D daily over many months to achieve these results. Evidence based upon studies such as these have stimulated the emergence of using Vitamin D in the management of diabetes. It has been suggested that healthcare practitioners treating patients with diabetes and/or metabolic syndrome routinely monitor blood levels of Vitamin D.

 

If Vitamin D is found to be low, Vitamin D supplementation should be considered at least until blood levels of Vitamin D reach desirable levels. Daily doses of 4,000 IU of Vitamin D appear to be a sage and reasonable dosage to begin a supplementation regimen in an effort to reestablish desirable levels of Vitamin D in the blood stream if deficiencies are found.