Is it just me, or is EVERYBODY talking about vitamin D deficiencies these days? Suddenly, everyone I know is coming back from their health check-ups with prescriptions to combat their D-ficiencies. Do a Google search for “low vitamin D” and you’ll come up with more than 6.4 MILLION hits.
Low vitamin D is associated with everything from minor stuff to cancers—and often people lacking in D don’t show any symptoms at all.
When I think of vitamin D, two things pop into my head:
- How much I hated milk when I was a kid after the Little House on the Prairie books conned me into believing that milk fresh from the cow was as close as a “good kid” could come to a narcotic. Blech.
- I love the word “rickets”… it’s so old-fashioned and clicky-sounding!
But if you have ankylosing spondylitis (AS), or other chronic inflammatory rheumatic diseases, your chances of having low vitamin D levels is greater than the normal population.
A report presented at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in November 2015, encouraged physicians treating people with rheumatoid arthritis, AS, and psoriatic arthritis to pay attention to their patients’ vitamin D levels.
The importance of vitamin D came to light during the Industrial Revolution when more and more children started exhibiting weak bones, bowed legs and growth problems. In adults, pelvic bones became so deformed that women couldn’t deliver their babies vaginally. Caesarian sections soared.
It took 270 years for a cure to be found for the problem: sunlight and small amounts of cod liver oil.
So what is vitamin D, anyway?
According to the Vitamin D Council (there’s a vitamin D COUNCIL?!?!?—who knew?), vitamin D “isn’t like most other vitamins.” For one thing, most other vitamins aren’t manufactured by the body itself… you have to eat the proper foods or take the proper supplements to get them.
Vitamin D, on the other hand, is created by the body when your skin is exposed to sunlight.
Also, in order for vitamin D to do its job, it first turns into a hormone. Exposure to a specific spectrum of solar ultraviolet radiation causes a pre-vitamin D compound to be synthesized, which is converted into vitamin D within 1 to 2 days, and later transformed by the liver and kidneys into the active vitamin D hormone.
Unless you are an absolute beast about applying and re-applying copious amounts of really high-SPF lotion, sunblock doesn’t keep you from getting enough sun exposure to produce vitamin D—but you may need to stay outside at high noon a little longer than you normally would.
Other fun facts about vitamin D?
- It’s fat soluble, which means it dissolves in your body’s fat cells and is stored there, where it can accumulate to unhealthy levels (vs. water soluble vitamins which are able to pass through your body if they’re not needed or be used if they are needed)
- How much time you need to expose your skin to sunlight depends on where you are in the world, what time of day it is, and the “starting color” of your skin (darker skin is less able to absorb UV-B rays)
- The more skin you expose, the more vitamin D is produced (devotees of nude beaches must be loaded with it!)
- If you live north of latitude 33 (Atlanta, Georgia in the US), during the winter it’s impossible to produce vitamin D from sunlight because the sun doesn’t get high enough in the sky for UV-B rays to penetrate the atmosphere
- Foods that naturally have vitamin D include fish-liver oils, fatty fishes, mushrooms, egg yolks, and liver (it’s also added to milk and some foods and baby formulas)
- Its main function in the body is to maintain calcium and phosphorous concentrations in the blood by helping the small intestine efficiently absorb those minerals from your diet
- It’s not just good for bones! Proper vitamin D levels also help the heart, brain, and immune system (including the inflammatory response) to function properly
- It even helps cut the risk of some cancers and multiple sclerosis, and is good for our lungs and airways!
Most people today don’t get enough vitamin D from sunlight, and so would benefit from taking supplements (RDA 1,000 IU). More research needs to be done to see if low vitamin D causes an increase in AS disease activity.
But until then, people who have AS should take extra care to keep their levels up—fill your cups with D-fortified milk and take your supplements!—and should talk with their healthcare team about what’s best for their particular case.
