THE UNDERRATED VITAMIN
Analyze your typical day and count the minutes you have exposed yourself to the SUN. By SUN here means direct sunlight without any barriers like glass or cloth. Probably it may not even be 5 min daily. Ever wondered why there is an increased need of vitamin D supplements, ever hear your parents, when they were young taking Vitamin D supplements. So, why now? Because our bodies are not getting the required exposure to direct sunlight to manufacture Vitamin D.
Is Vitamin D really important?
Answer to this question is YES, even much more important as recent researches have shown multiple roles of Vitamin D in promoting Health & Immunity.
Vitamin D has many roles.
It has a strong Anti-Inflammatory role.
It has Anti -Tumor effect.
It prevents chronic diseases such as Diabetes, Cardio Vascular Diseases & Cancer.
It regulates all Immune Responses.
It acts as hormone & regulates many functions.
It is required for calcium absorption
It prevents osteoporosis and so on.
There is a Global epidemic of low Vitamin D levels without a known cause. It has been observed that, when the serum Vitamin D level falls below 30ng/ml, there are increased chances of many chronic diseases as stated above. A serum Vitamin D level of approximately 52ng/ml has been shown through studies to be associated with a reduction by 50% in the incidences of Breast Cancer. Supplementation with Vitamin D is usually recommended to reach the goal of 40 – 50ng/ml.
Food sources of Vitamin D are fatty fish, fish eggs, caviar, organ meat, egg yolk and mushrooms. But the cheapest, easiest and the most effective source of Vitamin D is exposure to UVB sunlight. The benefits of exposure to sunlight are :
Vitamin D in the skin lasts twice as long in the blood as vitamin D ingested from the diet.
The skin not only makes Vitamin D upon exposure to UV rays but also makes other photo products that cannot be obtained from food or supplements.
UVB light cannot pass through glass; exposure of the skin to sunlight through glass will not result in Vitamin D synthesis. Another deterrent to Vitamin D synthesis by the skin is sunscreens. A sunscreen with SPF15 reduces skin synthesis of Vitamin D by 95% & SPF reduces it by 99%.
Direct exposure to sunlight between 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for atleast 3-4 times a week, provides enough Vitamin D required by the body, but there are many factors that effect Vitamin D synthesis such as skin type, season of the year, latitude etc.
It is recommended that children and adult requires 600IU/day and elderly requires 800IU/day of Vitamin D.
Ref: Krause’s Food the Nutrition Care Process (14th Edition 2016) by Kathl.pdf
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