Why Vitamin D Intake is Essential for Your Health

Introduction:

Unlock the full potential of your wellness care program with the power of vitamin D, a critical yet often underestimated element for maintaining health and vitality across various bodily functions.

Key Takeaways:

• Vitamin D is essential for whole-body wellness, affecting nearly every type of tissue in the body.
• A significant portion of Americans are deficient in vitamin D.
• Sunlight is the primary source of vitamin D; fortified foods and supplements like vitamin D3 pills are alternative sources.
• Adequate vitamin D levels support cardiovascular health, reduce diabetes risk, strengthen the immune system, and maintain healthy bones.

Why is vitamin D essential for wellness care?

Vitamin D is vital for wellness care because it supports whole-body health by maintaining strong and healthy tissues, reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes, strengthening the immune system, and ensuring healthy bones. It is obtained through sunlight exposure, certain foods, and supplements.

If you are following a wellness care program, you’ll be aware of the need to provide your body with the necessary vitamins and minerals that it needs to stay well and healthy. Among these essential elements is vitamin D, the importance of which has, until recently at least, been much underestimated. In fact, vitamin D is an absolutely critical substance for maintaining your health and wellness. Although most people associate it with bone health, vitamin D is important in so many other ways.

Vitamin D for Whole-Body Wellness Care

Nearly every type of tissue in your body has vitamin D receptors. That means that these tissue types all need vitamin D to remain strong and healthy. Vitamin D is actually a hormone, as evidenced by the presence of receptors for the substance in our body tissue. As such, our bodies need to receive a substantial amount of vitamin D for optimum wellness. Too many people in the United States are deficient in vitamin D. It is estimated that around 64% of Americans do not have sufficient vitamin D in their bodies to keep all tissue types functioning as they should.

How Do We Get Vitamin D into Our Bodies?

The richest source of vitamin D is sunlight. When you expose yourself to the sun, vitamin D is created by your skin. Regular exposure to sunlight will actually provide your body with more than enough vitamin D. For those of us who live in northern latitudes though, absorbing vitamin D from sunshine is easier said than done. You can also receive vitamin D from eating certain foods, but in much more modest quantities than the amount your body can generate through exposure to sunlight.

The most effective way to absorb vitamin D from foodstuffs is to drink fortified milk. However, to obtain even the government’s recommended amount of vitamin D, you will need to drink 6 glasses of fortified milk per day. That’s a lot of milk and for people who can’t tolerate lactose; milk has to be eliminated from vitamin D intake options. Fish such as salmon, sardines and tuna contain a reasonable amount of vitamin D, but again you’d have to eat a large amount of fish to get a healthy quantity of vitamin D into your body.

Because getting a sufficient intake of vitamin D is so difficult, food manufacturers are beginning to add the vitamin to more products, such as yoghurt, breakfast cereal, orange juice and margarine. Still it remains a challenge to get enough vitamin D, given that many of us don’t receive too much sunshine and milk and dairy products are not suitable for some people. Therefore, perhaps the best way to receive a healthy dose of daily vitamin D (around 1,000 IU) is to take vitamin D3 in the form of pills.

Vitamin D and Cardiovascular Wellness Care

Vitamin D is incredibly important for our circulatory system components. Heart muscles and blood vessels are all rich in vitamin D receptors and studies have shown that the risk of heart attacks is considerably higher in people with vitamin D deficiencies. In addition to other benefits, vitamin D helps to prevent the build-up of collagen and similar fibrotic proteins that stiffen our artery walls and heart muscles. The stiffening of these tissues results in high blood pressure and lower blood circulation. If you care to look after your heart, a sufficient vitamin D intake should be an essential element in your corporate wellness programs.

Vitamin D and Diabetes :

Your risk of developing diabetes is reduced if you are receiving satisfactory amounts of vitamin D. Like your heart and blood vessels, your pancreas and liver are full of vitamin D receptors. Both of these organs play important roles in the maintenance of blood glucose levels. A vitamin D deficiency makes you very likely to develop insulin intolerance, the first step on the road to full-blown diabetes. If you already suffer with insulin intolerance or pre-diabetes, your levels of vitamin D will heavily influence whether or not your condition progresses to type II diabetes.

Other Reasons to Keep Your Vitamin D Levels Up

As well as being essential in preventing diabetes and keeping your heart healthy, maintaining sufficient levels of vitamin D is the way to ensure your immune system stays strong. Vitamin D is also believed to help our bodies resist numerous forms of cancer. Then of course there is the importance of vitamin D in maintaining strong, healthy bones, the one thing that this vitamin has long been known for. Low levels of vitamin D are known to be at least partially responsible for osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis and general bone and muscle pain.

Today we know that vitamin D is so much more than simply being “the bone vitamin”. Its role in wellness care is still being researched and explored, but there can be no doubt that it’s far more important for our overall health than has traditionally been recognized.

If ever there was a reason to get out and enjoy some sunshine when you can, it’s the need for your body to receive vitamin D. Just remember not to overdo the sun exposure. Just 10 to 20 minutes with the sun on your face, hands and arms every few days gives you all the vitamin D you need. If you live in less sunny climes, use a vitamin D3 substitute, but keep your intake between 1,000 and 2,000 IU per day. However you go about it, introducing vitamin D into your wellness care program is one initiative you should put into effect without delay.