What Are The Causes Of Low Vitamin D

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Everyone knows that the body needs proteins and carbohydrates to function. They also know that this alone is not enough and that we also need vitamins and minerals to remain healthy. One such vitamin is vitamin D.

What most of us know about vitamin D is that it is important to have healthy bones. While youngsters may not even worry about this vitamin, the older you get, the more you wonder if you are getting your daily dose of vitamin D or not. This is because of the fear of osteoporosis.

Many people also know that vitamin D is synthesized in the body when we go out in the sun and so don’t have to worry about it. Yet with the number of middle aged and elderly people getting osteoporosis only increasing every year, it is good to know something about the vitamin and how it works so that we can be prepared.

In this article we will discuss all the different reasons why you can have a deficiency in vitamin D.

What are the sources of vitamin D

Before we go into the different reasons why you can be deficient, let us first take a glance at what the different sources of vitamin D are.

The major source for vitamin D in our bodies is from the sun. There is something called 7-dehydrocholesterol that is present in everyone’s skin. This 7-dehydrocholesterol is a derivative from cholesterol in the blood. In the presence of UV radiation, it gets converted to vitamin D. The vitamin D that is synthesized in the body is given the name vitamin D₃.

The other source for vitamin D is from the food we eat. Plants do not generate much of Vitamin D, but most animal products have a lot of it. Sea food is the best source and fatty fish like catfish, mackerel, tuna, sardine, eels etc are the best because they have quite a lot of it.

When it comes to animal products, meat and eggs have the most quantities although nothing in comparison to fish. Some plant matter like mushrooms and yeast can generate quite a lot of vitamin D when exposed to UV radiation.

The vitamin D that is consumed from external sources is referred to as vitamin D₂. There is absolutely no difference in the working of the two, and when you say vitamin D it can refer to either one or the other.

What are the dangers of deficiency in vitamin D

In children a deficiency in vitamin D can result in rickets and in the older, it can result in osteoporosis and osteomalasia. The dangers of all these diseases is that they very rarely have any symptoms. In fact osteoporosis and rickets have almost no symptoms whatsoever. Even in the case of osteomalasia the only symptom would be chronic fatigue, which once again could be due to many other factors.

If vitamin D is synthesized in the body, how then will we be deficient in it?

This is a very good question. Firstly you should remember that if you are a healthy adult, you probably don’t need to worry about a deficiency in vitamin D at all. Very rarely do people have any genetic factors that predispose them towards not being able to get enough vitamin D.

The problem is that nowadays many people are not healthy. Even if we aren’t ill, most of us work in jobs that keep us indoors all day. Getting half an hour of sunlight a day is a big deal. Although the body is able to stock up on vitamin D, one week’s vacation a year in a sunny spot is not enough.

There are many people who say that just 10 or 20 minutes of sunlight a day is sufficient to ensure that you don’t have any deficiency, but many of us are not able to get even this.

The second factor is that our body needs 7-dehydrocholesterol to synthesize vitamin D. This 7-dehydrocholesterol is in turn derived from the cholesterol in our blood. Many of us, especially once we cross 30 start reducing our intake of food because we feel that we want to stay in shape but don’t have the time to exercise. Cutting down on fats may mean that you don’t get those extra inches round your waist, but it also means that your body will not be able to make enough 7-dehydrocholesterol. Without enough of it you will obviously not be able to synthesize enough vitamin D.

If you feel that you can get your requirement of vitamin D from supplements, think again. Although the recommendation is that a normal healthy person needs only around 500 IU of vitamin D a day, this is provided the said healthy person also gets a couple of hours in the sun every day. If this is not the case you will need between 2000 and 4000 IU a day. Considering that even the richest source of vitamin D, catfish, only has around 5 IU per gram, meaning you will get only a couple of hundred IU a day, this is really not enough.

You may think that you can take supplemental vitamin tablets, but unless you want to be the sort who almost lives on pills, it isn’t something that you will consider. Also synthetic supplements do not work as well as the natural ones.

What can I do then

It’s very simple. Eat healthy food. Junk food has very low nutritional value, but a lot of calories. Also get at least half an hour of sun a day. All you need to do is to go for a walk for half an hour in the mornings and everything’s solved. What’s more, you get your daily dose of exercise too, which is only going to make you more healthy.

Jenny Allan is the webmaster at NutritionUncovered.com where she provides practical nutrition and supplement tips and advice. If you enjoyed this article you can get FREE updates by RSS.