Yesterday my wife got results from some blood tests and they showed that she had a vitamin D deficiency.
I thought that this was odd since I was under the impression that anyone that got enough sun would have their bodies create enough vitamin D to stay healthy.
I was apparently wrong.
Not only is my wife deficient but a friend of hers as well as my sister too. I am not sure how widespread the problem of vitamin D deficiency is but in looking this up I have found that it is a lot more common than we would believe.
The body creates vitamin D and you also get it from fish and bread that is fortified with Vitamin D. Other sources of Vitamin D include eggs and liver.
Causes of Vitamin D deficiency
The primary way that people become deficient in Vitamin D is by not getting enough sun or by having the body block the creation of Vitamin D (Did you know that your body creates it’s own Vitamin D?).
Pregnant women or women that are breastfeeding as well as people that wear a veil or other bodycovering outside as well as people taking carbamezepine, phenytoin, primidone or barbiturates are the most at risk of being low in Vitamin D
Signs of Vitamin D deficiency
There are a few signs of vitamin D deficiency, mostly a sense of tiredness and muscle soreness or weakness and bone and joint soreness are the most common.
But in kids low Vitamin D can manifest as severe athsma as recent research has found. And also in kids it is critical to find this deficiency as it can lead to bad bones and late teeth as well as soft bone tissue, and we all know how much kids want to run around and play!
Fixing Vitamin D deficiency
The most important way though that Vitamin D deficiency can be found is by a blood test.
The simple test will come with results of what the level of toxicity is as well as low and normal levels. To improve your levle of vitamin D you can take supplements which come in 400 or 1000 IU amounts and must be taken for weeks or months to raise the level of Vitamin D that you have.
Toxicity is kind of difficult as the highest recommended amount of Vitamin D to ingest is about 10,000 IU.
Getting outdoors and fixing any health issues that are causing this will obviously help as well. In some situations when a person is chronically low or needs to raise the vitamin D level quickly you can get injections.