Aurora Geib – The importance of vitamin D is well known. As far back as the 1930s, doctors first recognized the link between a vitamin D deficiency and the skeletal disease called rickets. Rickets causes a softening of the bones and teeth. Even if someone’s diet has adequate levels of calcium, without enough vitamin D to properly control calcium and phosphate levels in the blood stream, demineralization of the bones can take place. The symptoms of rickets include bowed legs, bone pain, dental problems, a widening of the wrists, frequent bone fractures and skull deformities.

Because rickets is seldom seen in first-world countries, it’s easy to think that vitamin D deficiencies are a thing of the past. However, new research has recently shed light on other, more subtle, symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency. Many illnesses which, at first glance, seem totally unrelated to something as physically obvious as rickets actually may have their roots in a lack of vitamin D.

Just what is vitamin D?

The term vitamin D, according to the Mayo Clinic’s Drugs and Supplements site (1), actually refers to several different forms of the vitamin, including D2, which comes from our diet, and D3, which is manufactured by our skin when exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D’s main purpose in the body is to regulate blood levels of calcium and phosphorous.

The sunshine vitamin

It’s actually hard to get enough vitamin D from a normal diet. This is why many people choose to consume liquid calcium with magnesium and other supplements that include vitamin D. It’s found at the highest concentration in fatty fish such as tuna, mackerel and salmon. Some mushrooms are also high in D, and their level of the vitamin actually increases when exposed to ultraviolet light. Continue reading →