Sunday, March 25, 2012

Shining Some Light on Vitamin D3




Vitamin D3 is one of the most useful nutritional tools we have at our disposal for improving overall health. Vitamin D3 acquires hormone-like actions. As a hormone, the vitamin controls phosphorus, calcium, and bone metabolism and neuromuscular function. D3 is the only vitamin the body can manufacture from sunlight. Yet, with today's indoor living and the extensive use of sunscreens due to concern about skin cancer, we are now a society with millions of individuals deficient in life-sustaining bone building and immune modulating vitamin D3.

Vitamin D3 plays a wide role in overall health,

It's becoming clear that a large percentage of individuals are deficient in this important nutrient. This deficiency is many times miss diagnosed as fibromyalgia. The fear of skin cancer has stopped many individuals from obtaining beneficial amounts of sunlight. Even individuals, who venture out into the sun often and use suntan lotion, may be deficient in vitamin D and need supplements to maintain health.

Where Do We Get Vitamin D3?

The primary source of vitamin D for both children and adults is from sun exposure, not from diet.

*Vitamin D3 is one of two forms of vitamin D used for nutritional supplementation.

A. Vitamin D3 is manufactured from lanolin derived from the wool fat of sheep.

B. The other form, known as Vitamin D2 is a vegetarian form manufactured by the ultraviolet radiation of yeast. Vitamin D is naturally produced in the skin following exposure to sunlight. Very few foods naturally contain vitamin D (namely fatty fish, egg yolks and liver) or are fortified with vitamin D.

What Are The Benefits?

Vitamin D3 has been shown to be at least 3 times more effective than vitamin D2 in both animal and human studies.

* Vitamin D3 is free of toxin tagalongs.

* Supports many body systems including healthy bones, nerves, heart, brain, lung, esophagus, breasts, colon, stomach, pancreas, prostate, uterus, ovaries, kidneys.

What Is The Proper Dosage?

A growing number of researchers who have widely studied vitamin D's are almost begging the general public to consume more of this important nutrient. Vitamin D3's high safety profile and the wide role it plays in our health, researches recommend consuming 2,000 to 4,000 IU per day of this nutrient at times of the year when sunlight is scarce is a prudent way to improve overall health. In conclusion, I have generated information on this vitamin. A growing number of researchers who have widely studied vitamin D3 are almost begging the general public to consume more of this important nutrient. because of the wide role it plays in our health. So treat yourself and purchase Nature's Sunshine Vitamin D3.

Are you getting enough of the “sunshine vitamin”? More and more experts think not. Vitamin D is so critical to our health that nature designed a fail-safe way to obtain it: from the sun. Throughout history, exposure to the sun gave humans the vital doses needed to build bones, protecting children against the characteristic bowed legs of rickets and adults from osteomalacia, or softening of the bones.


Now, we spend more time indoors, in cars or behind computers. We drink less milk and when we do go out, slather on sunscreen. It is no coincidence, experts say, that rickets (which had been virtually wiped out until the 1990s) is making a comeback. Scattered cases of rickets in African-American infants and breast-fed babies have been documented as far south as Georgia; just last February, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that over 80 percent of pregnant black women and nearly half of pregnant white women (and the babies they later gave birth to) were classified as “insufficient” or “deficient” in vitamin D. Older people in hospitals and nursing homes are especially likely to lack the vitamin; in one study, 57 percent of elderly patients admitted to a Boston hospital were found to be vitamin D-deficient, according to blood samples and diet records. What’s more, dietary surveys suggest that most Americans, young and old, aren’t getting recommended amounts of the vitamin.


The Promise of D
Vitamin D is essential for helping bones absorb calcium, keeping them strong and preventing osteoporosis. Vitamin D also helps maintain muscle strength and balance and lowers the risk of bone fractures in older people. But it seems meant to do more: there are receptors for vitamin D in almost every cell in the body, and evidence is growing that the vitamin helps the immune system function and regulates cell growth.

Exciting new research suggests that vitamin D may offer protection against some types of cancer, including breast and prostate cancers and, in particular, colorectal cancer. How vitamin D fights cancer isn’t known for sure, but it “helps reduce cell proliferation and differentiation, and it may reduce inflammation,” says Edward Giovannucci, M.D., professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. Giovannucci, whose work has reported increased risks of digestive system cancers among people with low vitamin D levels, threw down the gauntlet in a keynote speech at the American Association of Cancer Research in 2004. “I would challenge anyone to find an area or nutrient or any factor,” he said, “that has such consistent anti-cancer benefits as vitamin D.”



Experts are not sure about how vitamin D protects against autoimmune diseases, but believe that it may serve as a brake on the overactive immune cells. “Vitamin D may decrease the development of type 1 T-helper cells,” explains Charles Stephensen, Ph.D., a research scientist at the USDA’s Western Human Nutrition Research Center at the University of California, Davis. These cells are involved in protective immune responses, “but they may also initiate autoimmune disease, especially in people who may have a genetic predisposition.”

Other, preliminary research hints at a connection between inadequate prenatal vitamin D and asthma in young children. Recent data even suggest that low vitamin D may be linked with epidemic influenza (which tends to strike, after all, during sun-deprived winter months).


1 comment:

  1. Great article on the importance of Vitamin D. Specifically vitamin D3 is what you explain to be the three times more effective than other D vitamin forms. Keep posting new updates to your blog, have a great rest of the day.
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