Vitamin D makes your bones and teeth strong as well as helping the body to absorb calcium, phosphorus and other minerals. If you think you may be low, your doctor can perform a test.
You can get the vital vitamin from sunshine on the skin, eggs, fatty fish and fortified foods including milk and cereal. A lack of vitamin D can result in weak bones, falls and fractures. But how can you tell if you’re not getting enough vitamin D? Here’s how your body will tell you …
1. Slow Wound Healing
For people who lack vitamin D, cuts, burns and other skin injuries seem to heal at a much slower rate. Researchers are actually studying whether vitamin D supplements can help people recover faster from skin injuries.
2. Osteoporosis
No single thing triggers the condition that makes bones more porous and thus breakable, which affects 33 percent of women between the ages 60 to 70 and 66 percent of those 80 or older … but not getting enough vitamin D makes it difficult for the body to battle osteoporosis.
3. Muscle Pain
Those who don’t get enough vitamin D often experience pain and weakness in their muscles. That can lead to a double whammy of increasing the chances of falling and breaking a bone, which could be weakened by the lack of the crucial vitamin.
4. Osteomalacia
This is an adult-onset form of the childhood disease rickets that can result from a long-term lack of vitamin D, which is needed to repair and maintain bones. If they become soft, the leg bones can bow in a rickets-like style, and cause other breaks or problems, especially in the hips.
5. Other Related Problems
Researchers believe that a lack of vitamin D might have an effect on diabetes types 1 and 2, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis and some forms of cancer.
6. Child Danger
A lack of vitamin D can result in rickets, and a lack of vitamin D in b------feeding mothers can cause rickets as well.
7. At-Risk People
Those with bowel problems like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), celiac disease or cystic fibrosis need vitamin D to help absorb the fat to lessen symptoms. People who’ve had part of their stomach, intestines or both removed during gastric bypass surgery need vitamin D to help absorb needed nutrients. Those who are obese with a BMI over 30 tend to have less vitamin D than those in better shape.
