How Many Benefits Of Vitamin D Supplement
The role and importance of vitamin D in keeping the body healthy and increasing immunity is being discussed anew. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’.
Adequate production of vitamin D in the body accelerates the body’s adaptive immunity. As a result, the body’s immune system activates T-cells and antigen-rich cells and protects the body from external pathogens. Vitamin D possesses both anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory properties, which are essential for activating the body’s overall immune system. Therefore, vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of many respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, asthma, and many other viral and bacterial long-term diseases.
Research says that when the body does not have enough vitamin D, it increases the process called ‘cytokine storm’; As a result, this extra cytokine increases the rate of infection by damaging the body’s tissues. This cytokine is a type of protein that is an important part of the body’s immune system. Vitamin D regulates gene expression as a steroid hormone; That is, it plays a controlling role in the body’s protein production. And protein is the key to building a strong immune system.
Some recent studies have shown that vitamin D plays a significant role in preventing respiratory infections. According to some surveys around the world, 80 percent of those who have been hospitalized with covid Virus deficiency have vitamin D deficiency.
In addition to boosting immunity, vitamin D contributes to many other important functions of the body. Notable among them is keeping the teeth, bones, and muscles healthy. Lack of adequate vitamin D impairs the absorption of calcium in the body and bone mineralization, which leads to osteoporosis. In the absence of this, children can get rickets and adults can get various bone diseases including osteomalacia.
Vitamin D maintains proper levels of calcium and phosphate in the blood, which helps in the overall functioning of the body cells including normal muscle contraction, nerve stimulation transport, bone mineralization. In addition, vitamin D helps the body make enough insulin to prevent and control diabetes. Vitamin D is also needed to keep the heart healthy, control depression, Alzheimer’s, and irritable mood, that is, maintain mental health. Researchers claim that giving vitamin D supplements to depressed people can improve.
How to get Vitamin D?
Vitamin D is mainly present in ultraviolet rays, i.e. sunlight, and enters the body from the upper part of the skin. When exposed to sunlight, the body begins to make vitamin D on its own. Vitamin D deficiency can occur if a person is not exposed to sunlight day after day for any reason. In addition, the health of the kidneys and liver is needed for vitamin D to be effective inside the body.
Studies have shown that 80 percent of the people in our country are deficient in vitamin D. In daily life we spend more time during the day from outside to inside, like at home or office. It is said that children and adults did not go out of the house due to Kovid Atimari. So at this time, the deficiency of vitamin D has become more evident.
If you spend at least 15 to 20 minutes in contact with sunlight at least 3 days a week from 10 am to 3 pm, the body can take 10,000 to 20,000 units of vitamin D.
The human body consumes 30 percent of vitamin D from food, but many diet-conscious people now give up cholesterol-rich foods altogether. If you want to keep an adequate amount of vitamin D in your body, you have to have a balanced diet. We can get vitamin D by eating healthy fatty foods. The use of oil in food should be monitored.
Typically egg yolks, cheese, oil, ghee, cod liver oil or codfish oil, almond milk, fortified cereals and juices, sour yogurt, marine, and fatty fish, meat is grown in a sunny environment, soybean meal, beef liver, sun-dried Adequate vitamin D can be obtained from mushrooms, etc. Fortified food can make up for that lack. Vitamin D-rich fortified foods include bread, cereals, milk, cheese, seafood, and orange juice.
How to understand you need Vitamin D?
The symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are not so obvious. However, fatigue and weakness, hair loss, frequent colds, coughs and sickness, delays in wound healing, loss of interest in work, depression, muscle pain. Vitamin D levels in the blood can be determined.
Who is most at risk?
Older people are more likely to develop vitamin D deficiency if they lose fat or cholesterol under the skin. Older people stay at home more. If there is too much melanin in the skin, ultraviolet cannot enter, in this case, also vitamin D deficiency occurs. In addition, excessive use of sunscreen on the skin, living in places not exposed to the sun, obese children and adolescents with blackheads on various parts of the skin, people wearing clothing almost all over the body for religious or other reasons, living a formal life (hostel, hospital or People who do office) are at greater risk.
How much do you want Vitamin D?
People aged 1 to 60 need an average of 600 IU of vitamin D daily and those over 60 need to take 600 IU of vitamin D. If this need is not met normally, the supplement should be taken as per the advice of the doctor. Older people, women who have gone through menopause, kidney patients should take vitamin D supplements with the advice of a doctor.
Writer: Fahmida Hashem, Senior Nutritionist, LabAid Cardiac Hospital, Dhaka.
