Vitamin D is essential for strong bones because it helps the body use calcium from the diet.
Vitamin D deficiency affects persons of all ages. Common manifestations of vitamin D deficiency are symmetric low back pain, proximal muscle weakness, muscle aches, and throbbing bone pain elicited with pressure within the sternum or tibia.
Vitamin D is essential for strong bones since it helps the body use calcium from the diet. Traditionally, vitamin D deficiency has been related to rickets, a disease in which the bone tissue doesn’t properly mineralize, resulting in soft bones and skeletal deformities. But increasingly, scientific studies are revealing the importance of vitamin D in protecting against a number of health problems.
What is vitamin D?
Vitamin D is a vitamin that is needed for good health. Unlike other vitamins, we do not require to get vitamin D from food. A main source of vitamin D is created by our own bodies. It is produced in the skin by the action of sunlight. This can be a good thing because most foods contain no or hardly any vitamin D naturally.
What does vitamin D do for the body?
This essential nutrient is called a vitamin, but dietary vitamin D is really a precursor hormone – the building block of the powerful steroid hormone in your body called calcitriol. It’s been noted for many years that vitamin D is critical towards the health of our bones and teeth, but deeper insight into D’s wider role in our health is quite new.
Why do we need vitamin D?
A main action of vitamin D is to help calcium and phosphorus within our diet to be absorbed from the gut. Calcium and phosphorus are necessary to keep bones healthy and strong. So, vitamin D is really important for strong and healthy bones. Additionally, vitamin D seems to be important for muscles and general health. Addititionally there is some evidence that vitamin D may also help to prevent other diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Causes of vitamin D deficiency
- You’ve dark skin. The pigment melanin reduces the skin’s ability to create vitamin D in response to sunlight exposure. Some research has shown that older adults with darker skin are in high risk of vitamin D deficiency.
- You don’t consume the recommended levels of the vitamin over time. This really is likely if you follow a strict vegetarian diet, since most of the natural sources are animal-based, including fish and fish oils, egg yolks, cheese, fortified milk, and beef liver.
- Your digestive tract cannot adequately absorb vitamin D. Certain medical problems, including Crohn’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and celiac disease, can impact your intestine’s ability to absorb vitamin D from the food you eat.
- You’re obese. Vitamin D is extracted from the blood by fat cells, altering its release in to the circulation. People with a body mass index of 30 or greater often have low blood levels of vitamin D.
- Your contact with sunlight is limited. Because the body makes vitamin D when your skin is subjected to sunlight, you may be at risk of deficiency if you are homebound, reside in northern latitudes, wear long robes or head coverings for religious reasons, and have an occupation that prevents sun exposure.
- Your kidneys cannot convert vitamin D to the active form. As people age their kidneys are less in a position to convert vitamin D to its active form, thus increasing their risk of vitamin D deficiency.
Symptoms and signs of vitamin D deficiency
- Pelvis and spine might have deformities
- Muscle tone and strength is poor
- Bow legs really are a characteristic sign of rickets
- (involuntary muscle contractions) and seizures.
- Growth might be impaired
- Short stature – the individual may be shorter than is anticipated
- Skull may be abnormal fit
- The breastbone may protrude
- Wrists and ankles are thicker than usual
- There may be bone tenderness and pain, fractures can happen after a trivial injury
- Formation of teeth is delayed and other dental deformities are noticed
- Serious symptoms in which calcium and phosphate levels are very low are tetany
