health and fitness

 

                  How does vitamin D work?

Vitamin D is a very important vitamin. You can estimate its importance from the fact that when it was discovered in 1920, there was a disease in children and adults. In this disease, the bones became so weak that when the children were growing up, their bones became crooked, they neither grew tall nor fully developed, we called them rickets. Similarly, when this disease occurred in adults, there was such a weakness of the bones that their growth and the structure of the bones changed. We used to call it osteomalacia.

In the 1920s, it was discovered that this disease was caused by a vitamin we now call vitamin D. So in the countries where the disease was present, this vitamin was added to the diet in the next ten years, which completely eradicated the disease.

The early twentieth century is when 13 vitamins were discovered. Even though vitamin D is added to different diets all over the world, rickets and atherosclerosis are less common, but there is still a disease called osteoporosis.

Where does vitamin D come from?

The biggest source of vitamin D is our own body. When the sun's rays hit our skin, there are two types of radiation in these sun rays, one is ultraviolet A radiation and the other is ultraviolet B radiation.

Ultraviolet A radiation when it hits our skin. So we have a natural type of cholesterol inside our skin that we call 7-dehydro-cholesterol. These rays after hitting them turn into cholesterol

 

But then from there, this cholesterol goes into the liver, from where it adds oxygen and hydrogen, and it becomes 25(OH)D there. It is this cholesterol that your doctor checks to see how much vitamin D you have.

But it is not yet in active form. To achieve this active form, this 25(OH)D cholesterol goes into our kidneys, There is another hydrogen and oxygen added to it. After which it becomes 125(OH)²D which we commonly call calcitriol and this is the active form. But the doctor checks your inactive form, which we call 25(OH)D.

If someone has a level of 20-30ng/ml, this is a borderline deficiency, If the level is less than 20ng/ ml, it means the patient is deficient, Which can be dangerous for him.

How vitamin D deficiency can cause osteoporosis?

A major role of vitamin D is that when it is present normally in our diet, then 30% of calcium is absorbed from our intestines to become part of our body.

But if there is a lack of vitamin D, about 10% of calcium is absorbed and calcium is very important for our heart muscle to function as well as for our nervous system. And if calcium is not properly absorbed in it, then the hormone is released from the parathyroid gland which we call parathyroid hormone, this hormone pulls calcium from the bones, which reduces calcium deficiency and does not affect our Vital Organ, but due to the loss of calcium from our bones, the bones become weak, this process is called osteoporosis.

Here it is very important to know why vitamin D deficiency occurs in today's humans. The earlier man used to work more, move around more, there were no air conditioners so he used to get sun rays, but today's person working in an office sits in an air-conditioner because of which he doesn't get sun rays. This is the reason why vitamin D, which is obtained from sun exposure, cannot be absorbed in the body, and vitamin D deficiency occurs.

In all the countries of the world that are beyond 37 degrees Celsius north and south of the equator, the sun's rays are very weak. So there is more vitamin D deficiency. Here we have discussed the vitamin D that is naturally produced in us.

Another natural source of vitamin D is fish, especially fatty fish and egg yolk. One egg yolk contains 20 international units of vitamin D, while our daily requirement is at least 400 to 600 international units.

There is enough cholesterol in the yolk of a single egg to meet the daily requirement of vitamin D, so you will have to eat a lot of eggs to meet your vitamin D needs, and so much cholesterol is not good for your health. Similarly, if we want to meet our vitamin requirement from fish, we have to eat a lot of fish, which is impossible. So this is the reason why milk and many different foods are fortified with vitamin D in different countries of the world. In this way, the requirement of vitamin D is met.

400 to 600 international units of vitamin D are needed a day, and people over the age of 70 need 800 international units a day. Because they often stay at home and do not go out, they need more, while people under the age of 70 years go out for one reason or another, so their deficiency continues to be fulfilled.

People who live in the West but belong to Pakistan, India, or Sri Lanka may be more deficient because they have more melanin-producing cells and such people, and the complexion of such people is black, then the ultraviolet radiation that falls in these countries is so weak that vitamin D is not formed in these people.

They should use vitamin D supplements to make up for their vitamin D deficiency but use supplements only on the advice of a doctor.

Excess of vitamin D has side effects.

If there is an excess of it in the body, in this case, because the calcium in the body will be too much, then due to this, dizziness may occur, semi-consciousness may occur, kidney stones may form And heart problems can also arise. Apart from osteoporosis, vitamin D also prevents many cancers such as prostate cancer in men. One of the benefits of using too much sunscreen is that it protects your skin from cancer and the color remains fair but the disadvantage is that vitamin D is reduced. This deficiency can be compensated with supplements.