Vitamin D – What the research shows....... | Arthritis Information

There has been lots of media buzz about Vitamin D lately. I became interested in Vitamin D about six years ago. I was reading about a doctor who noticed that although most of the elderly residents and staff at a long-term care facility got the flu that winter, the residents who were given vitamin D did not. My curiosity was piqued. Could vitamin D prevent flu symptoms?

For years, vitamin D was only recommended for strong bones because it increased your digestive system's ability to absorb calcium from the food you ate and deposit it in your bones. Recently, Dr. Michael F. Holick, a Vitamin D researcher at Boston University's Medical Center, identified links between a vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of developing the following diseases:

{#xf0b7} Heart disease

{#xf0b7} High blood pressure

{#xf0b7} Autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 Diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis

{#xf0b7} Cancer especially of the colon, breast, ovary, or prostate gland

{#xf0b7} Weak and aching muscles and debilitating bone pain that is often misdiagnosed, by your doctor, as arthritis, fibromyalgia, or a vascular disease

{#xf0b7} Other research indicates that Vitamin D might enhance the immune system.

Anyone with a moderate Vitamin D deficiency can become severely deficient during the winter months. Although Vitamin D can be made in your body when the sun's UVB rays strike your skin, you have to live above 35 degrees latitude to reap this benefit during the winter months. And the few foods that naturally contain Vitamin D – liver and fatty fish such as herring, salmon, and sardines – aren't staples on the American dinner plate. Some food manufacturers are adding Vitamin D to milk, margarine, butter, orange juice, and breakfast cereals. Check the food label for this information.

Ask yourself the following questions to evaluate your current Vitamin D level:

1. Do you get 10 to 15 minutes of direct sun exposure between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. three times a week?

2. Do you use a sunscreen rated SPF 8 or higher? Using these sunscreens reduces your skin's ability to produce Vitamin D by 95 percent.

3. Are you an older adult? Aging affects your skin's ability to make Vitamin D.

4. Do you have dark-colored skin? Dark-colored skin, or even a tan, reduces your skin's ability to make Vitamin D.

5. Do you live in an area of the country with heavy clouds or smog? These block the sun's rays.

6. Do you live north of Los Angeles or Atlanta (35 degrees latitude) from November to early March? You won't make enough vitamin D, because the sun's rays aren't strong enough during these months.

It's October. What's your vitamin D level? Ask your health care provider about the blood test that measures your body's vitamin D levels. If you're deficient, consider taking a vitamin D supplement to decrease your risk of developing one of the diseases linked to a vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D May Prevent Arthritis

Jan. 9, 2004 -- Move over vitamins A, B, C and E. It is beginning to look like the long ignored vitamin D is every bit as important for preventing disease as you are.

New research makes the case that vitamin D helps protect older women against rheumatoid arthritis -- an autoimmune joint disorder of unknown cause. Recent studies have also linked deficiencies of vitamin D to other disorders such as certain cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and even unexplained pain but its role in human autoimmune disease is less clear.

The studies are far from conclusive, but researcher Michael Holick, MD, says there is every reason to believe that the supplement plays a much bigger role in disease prevention than has been recognized.

"Vitamin D has always been considered sort of a ho-hum vitamin," Holick tells WebMD. "People think they get plenty of it from the sun or in their diets, but these days that just isn't the case."

Vitamin D and Rheumatoid Arthritis

The latest research drew on data from the Iowa Women's Health Study, which followed almost 30,000 women, aged 55 to 69, for 11 years. Over the course of the study, the women were questioned about their eating habits, their use of nutritional supplements, and other health-related issues.

During the trial, 152 of the women developed rheumatoid arthritis. The investigators found that women whose diets were highest in vitamin D had the lowest incidence of rheumatoid arthritis.

Women who got less than 200 international units (IU) of vitamin D in their diets each day were 33% more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than women who got more, researcher Kenneth G. Saag, MD, tells WebMD. Saag is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The association remained significant even after the researchers adjusted for other suspected rheumatoid arthritis risk factors, such as smoking. And even though many foods with vitamin D are also high in calcium, the vitamin's protective effect seemed to be independent of how much calcium the women ate.

The findings are reported in the January 2004 issue of the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism.