Spring has arrived, and the sun and people are starting to stay out longer. Seeing the sun and basking in its warm rays not only makes us feel happier?it is an important part of overall health. Our bodies make vitamin D from the abundance of ultraviolet sun rays when it hits our skin. That’s why vitamin D is known as the “sunshine vitamin.”
“Actually your body makes its own vitamin D from cholesterol,” said Dr. Rosa Kincaid, a holistic health physician in St. Louis. Humans contain natural molecules in their skin that are activated by ultraviolet rays to initiate the process of making vitamin D.
Unfortunately, African Americans and others of African descent make less vitamin D than others due to the amount of melanin in the skin. The darker your skin, the more melanin you have and melanin decreases the amount of ultraviolet rays that reach the inner layer of the skin, thereby decreasing vitamin D production.
Vitamin D promotes the absorption of calcium and phosphorous and helps deposit these two minerals in bones and teeth to make them stronger.
“This is the anti-aging vitamin in one package,” Kincaid said.
In fact, vitamin D is very important for all ages. Kincaid describes vitamin D as acting more like a hormone rather than a vitamin because it functions as a regulator.
“Vitamin D regulates the most abundant mineral we have in our body, which is calcium. Vitamin D is a regulator of almost every tissue in the body – not only the skeletal system but the nervous system. And your muscles – vitamin D regulates the muscle contraction by regulating calcium balance,” Kincaid said.
“You can take all the calcium that you want, but if you don’t have vitamin D, you won’t have strong bones; and they can break down and you can have osteoporosis.”
Research suggests that vitamin D is not only good for bone health, but it may also help prevent a number of ills.
“If you don’t have enough vitamin D, you can have nervousness; experience more anxiety and depression,” Kincaid said. “If you don’t have vitamin D, your body is going to age at a faster rate.”
And if that’s not enough, Kincaid said there can be other health consequences.
“Breast cancer is associated with low vitamin D and colorectal cancers are also associated with low vitamin D,” Kincaid added. “Prostate cancer; fatigue, diabetes, muscle twitches, cramps; and high blood pressure.”
How much is enough vitamin D?
Recently there has been much debate about the daily requirements of vitamin D. The current U.S.D.A. recommendation for infants, children and adults up to age 50 is 200 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per day, which is equivalent to two to three cups of vitamin D fortified milk.
Adults 51 to 70 years old need 400 IU – equivalent to four cups of vitamin D fortified milk, and those over 70 need 600 IU of vitamin D – equivalent to six cups of milk. That’s a lot of milk! And many persons, as they get older, drink less, little or no milk at all ? particularly if they have a problem with lactose intolerance.
Some experts believe this may be too little vitamin D because these recommendations are based on the amount of vitamin D needed to prevent rickets in children, not the amount needed to prevent some of the other conditions.
Although a number of foods such as milk, cereals, orange juice, and margarine have vitamin D added to them, there are actually very few sources of naturally occurring vitamin D in most Americans diet. Vitamin D can be found in salmon, catfish, sardines, tuna, liver, fish liver oil, egg yolks and some herbal fare like alfalfa, dandelion, fenugreek, rosehips; and sarsaparilla.
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing when taking vitamin D supplements.
“If you take 2,000 or 3,000 units of vitamin D a day, that’s probably not a problem, but it’s always good to know what you need,” Kincaid said. “If you take too much vitamin D, it can be toxic. You should go to your doctor to get your vitamin D measured. It’s a simple blood test.”
By far, the largest source of vitamin D is through the body’s own production of vitamin D after direct exposure to the sun. “To get vitamin D, you only need to be exposed for 20 minutes a day,” Kincaid said.
In fact, as many as half of all adults and children are said to have less than the recommend levels, and as many as 10 percent of children are highly deficient in vitamin D, according to a 2008 report in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. African Americans are more than twice as likely as others to be vitamin D deficient.
“Women who breastfeed their babies and vegetarians really want to make sure they take some supplements – Breast milk has very little vitamin D. You really don’t want to have bone deformities [rickets]…it will stunt their growth,” Kincaid explained.
