A new study has linked a lack of sunshine, the body's most natural source of vitamin D, to the prevalence of cardiovascular disease.
Factors that affect sunlight, and therefore vitamin D production, are tied to a patient's cardiovascular risks. In other words, the more sunlight you get, the better your cardiovascular health will be. These factors can include time of year, altitude, and geographical location.
There are a number of physiological mechanisms triggered by vitamin D production through sunlight exposure that act to fight heart disease, according to the study:
An increase in the body's natural anti-inflammatory cytokines.
The suppression of vascular calcification.
The inhibition of vascular smooth muscle growth.
British Journal of Nutrition October 2005; 94(4): 483-492
Emerging research indicates that vitamin D is more important to our health than previously thought, leading an increasing number of scientists to challenge whether the fear of sun exposure has made us cover up too much.
Doctors are finding an increase in vitamin D deficiencies, even as researchers discover remarkable results from the vitamin that affects nearly every tissue in the body.
Told their pain and muscle weakness would only get worse, and that they would likely remain in wheelchairs the rest of their lives, five patients in Buffalo, N.Y., decided to take a chance on large doses of vitamin D.
In 4 to 6 weeks they were up and about, saying goodbye to their wheelchairs and back to normal activities, pain free. When women took vitamin D in multivitamin supplements over a long period of time, their risk of developing multiple sclerosis was reduced by 40 percent.
And a disturbing number of children who don't have enough vitamin D in their bodies are showing up with rickets, a crippling bone disorder thought to have been eradicated more than 70 years ago. Dr. Craig Langman, a kidney and mineral metabolism expert at Children's Memorial Hospital and Northwestern University Medical School, sees a new case of rickets every week, triple the rate of five years ago.
"We're finding more and more kids are presenting with evidence of vitamin D malnutrition," said Langman, who noted that includes fractures and bone pain.
Vitamin D is a critical hormone that scientists are discovering helps regulate the health of more than 30 different tissues, from the brain to the prostate. It plays a role in regulating cell growth, the immune system and blood pressure, and in the production of insulin, brain chemicals and bone.
"We thought that vitamin D was a very narrow-acting substance," said Dr. Hector DeLuca of the University of Wisconsin, where vitamin D was first identified in the early 1900s, leading to the fortification of milk and some other foods that eliminated endemic rickets.
"The big surprise is that it's got a lot of important biological effects that probably contribute to our health and we're just now beginning to uncover them," said DeLuca. "Are we getting enough vitamin D? No we're not, especially in the winter."
Vitamin D is one of the body's many control systems. It acts like an emergency brake that helps stop cells from perilously misbehaving, as immune cells can do when they cause such autoimmune diseases as multiple sclerosis and as breast and prostate cells do when they turn cancerous.
This protection declines as vitamin D levels drop. University of Chicago microbiologist Yan Chun Li discovered just how that happens with high blood pressure. Vitamin D helps normalize blood pressure by keeping a pressure-increasing switch called renin in check.
Vitamin D's importance for health goes back more than 750 million years to the earliest life forms that left the ocean for the Earth's surface. All vertebrates today depend on sun exposure for vitamin D production.
The lack of vitamin D is known to cause rickets, osteoporosis and osteomalacia (soft bones). New research indicates that vitamin D malnutrition may also be linked to many chronic diseases such as cancer (breast, ovarian, colon and prostate), chronic pain, weakness, chronic fatigue, autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and Type 1 diabetes, high blood pressure, mental illnesses - depression, seasonal affective disorder and possibly schizophrenia - heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, tuberculosis and inflammatory bowel disease.
"A lot of people with aches and pains and marginal weakness could be helped by vitamin D supplements," said Dr. Paresh Dandona of the State University of New York at Buffalo who reported the first five cases of vitamin D deficient myopathy three years ago in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Undiagnosed pain is the chief complaint of more than one-third of patients. Studying 150 children and adults with undiagnosed pain, Dr. Greg Plotnikoff of the University of Minnesota discovered that 93 percent were severely or profoundly vitamin D deficient. All were put on prescription doses of the vitamin.
Comment: I recommend taking 4,000 IU everyday of Vitamin D3 for adults and 800 IU to 1000 IU for children.
Vitamin D3
CW
Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. If you decide to use this information on your own, it's your constitutional right, but I assume no responsibility.
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