Medical conditions that can cause vitamin D deficiency include: Cystic fibrosis, Crohn's disease and celiac disease: These conditions can prevent your intestines from adequately absorbing enough vitamin D through supplements, especially if the condition is untreated.
In children, it can cause rickets. Rickets is a rare disease that causes the bones to become soft and bend. African American infants and children are at higher risk of getting rickets. In adults, severe vitamin D deficiency leads to osteomalacia.
Vitamin D deficiency occurs when the body doesn't get enough vitamin D from sunlight or diet. Vitamin D deficiency can cause loss of bone density, osteoporosis, and broken bones. Vitamin D is sometimes called the sunshine vitamin because your body makes it from cholesterol when your skin is exposed to sunlight ( 1 ).
Vitamin D deficiency — when the level of vitamin D in your body is too low — can cause your bones to become thin, brittle or misshapen. Vitamin D also appears to play a role in insulin production and immune function — and how this relates to chronic disease prevention and cancer — but this is still being investigated.
Symptoms when vitamin D is low
Fatigue. Not sleeping well. Bone pain or achiness. Depression or feelings of sadness.
Left untreated, vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis in adults, rickets in children and adverse outcomes in pregnant women. It may also be linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer — although more study is needed on the topic.
Conclusion: Vitamin D deficiency rickets can be life threatening. Vitamin D supplementation is therefore crucial, especially in breastfed infants and some ethnic minorities (dark-skinned people, poor sun exposure), more at risk for developing severe rickets if not supplemented.
How Much Vitamin D Do I Need Per Day? Besides going outdoors in the sunshine, there are two others ways to improve the amount of vitamin D in your system: eating foods rich in vitamin D and supplements. “Adding an over-the-counter vitamin D supplement can make improvements in just three to four months time.
Growing evidence has demonstrated that vitamin D has a role in sleep regulation [12]. Specifically, vitamin D deficiency (VDD) can increase risk of sleep disorders and is associated with sleep difficulties, shorter sleep duration, and nocturnal awakenings in children and adults [13,14,15].
Because vitamin D is fat soluble, its absorption depends on the gut's ability to absorb dietary fat [4]. Fat malabsorption is associated with medical conditions that include some forms of liver disease, cystic fibrosis, celiac disease, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis [1,63].
Yes, if you're not getting enough vitamin D you will likely experience low energy and feel tired. An observational study, this one in 200 female nurses, found that only 9.5% of them had normal vitamin D levels, while 89% were found to have vitamin D deficiency.
Depression
Depression can also be a result of low vitamin D levels. Vitamin D affects your mood as well. You may experience symptoms of depression due to low energy levels.
As summarized in Figure 1, vitamin D deficiency has been mechanistically and clinically linked to neurological diseases and neuropsychological disorders, cognitive impairment and neurodegenerative diseases [20,29,30,31,32,33,34].
Vitamin D deficiency is significantly associated with lumbar disc degeneration and low back pain among postmenopausal women, according to research from Menopause.
In people having lack of Vitamin D, the muscle strength of waist, back, neck decreases. Decreased muscle strength can cause herniated disc and cervical discal hernia. All of this is reflected in the patient's pain.
Oranges are one of the fruits rich in Vitamin D as its juice is fortified with calcium & vitamin D. This is one of the best sources of vitamin D for people who are lactose intolerant and cannot include milk & dairy products in their diet.
Dean. "Adequate levels of magnesium in the body are essential for the absorption and metabolism not only of vitamin D but of calcium as well," Dean states. "Magnesium converts vitamin D into its active form so that it can help calcium absorption.
Sunlight is actually the most efficient way to get your daily recommended dose of vitamin D, as your skin is quite effective at producing it naturally when exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun. For most adults, ten to twenty minutes in direct sunlight is enough to absorb enough vitamin D for the day.
We recommend taking it with a source of quality fat in the morning or when you break your fast. Avoid taking vitamin D in the evening (we'll talk about why below). Since vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin—meaning it doesn't dissolve in water—your body can most easily absorb it when you take it with food.
The vitamin D that is consumed in food or as a supplement is absorbed in the part of the small intestine immediately downstream from the stomach. Stomach juices, pancreatic secretions, bile from the liver, the integrity of the wall of the intestine — they all have some influence on how much of the vitamin is absorbed.
Consumption of vitamin D supplements without enough magnesium can lead to problems such as vascular calcification. Calcification happens when calcium builds up in body tissue, blood vessels, or organs and vascular calcification refers to build-up in the arteries and veins.
Magnesium assists in the activation of vitamin D, which helps regulate calcium and phosphate homeostasis to influence the growth and maintenance of bones. All of the enzymes that metabolize vitamin D seem to require magnesium, which acts as a cofactor in the enzymatic reactions in the liver and kidneys.
Magnesium and calcium/multivitamin
But if you do take magnesium, Erin Stokes, ND, recommends not taking it at the same time as your multivitamin, as it may interfere with the absorption of smaller minerals found in the multivitamin, like iron and zinc.