Are you Efficient with your Vitamin D?

Test Yourself for "D"efficiency
Quick test: Find out in 10 seconds if you are "D"efficient
With your thumb, press on your sternum (breastbone). Is it tender or painful? Now, press on the tibia (shin bone) of both your legs. Are they sore or tender? If the answer is "yes" to both of these tests then there’s a 93 percent chance you’re deficient in Vitamin D. This is one of the most prevalent deficiencies in our culture.

What is Vitamin D and what does it do for us?
Vitamin D is both a hormone and a vitamin (vital amine). It’s a hormone because it’s created by the body when sunlight hits the skin. It also acts as a vitamin when it binds with calcium for proper absorption in the human body. Without enough Vitamin D, the body cannot absorb calcium or even mobilize essential fatty acids, such as Omega-3. It’s absolutely essential to have enough Vitamin D, yet many people don’t.

Signs of deficiency
The test above is one way of checking for low levels of Vitamin D. That’s because calcium is delivered to an area of the bones that is like a gelatin matrix. It’s this gelatin matrix that hardens into sturdy bone. But calcium can only be absorbed into this matrix when it is accompanied with enough Vitamin D. If there’s a Vitamin D deficiency, this matrix will revert back to gelatin near the surface of the bone, resulting in tenderness and bone pain.

This kind of bone pain can not only be seen in cases of osteomalacia (softening of the bones), but also in fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and even the pain associated with chronic depression.

Vitamin D deficiency can result in obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and psoriasis. Eventually, Vitamin D deficiency may lead to osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, especially breast, prostate and colon.

Reasons for deficiency
The primary reasons why people become deficient in Vitamin D are cultural or environmental. For instance, in cultures where women are totally clothed, including veils, people are almost universally deficient in Vitamin D, as are submariners who spend extended time submerged. Neither group gets much direct sunlight. For North Americans, the primary reason for Vitamin D deficiency also includes a lack of exposure to sunlight and insufficient consumption of cold-water fish, such as wild salmon, mackerel and sardines. These are good food sources of Vitamin D as well as calcium and Omega-3 fatty acids.

Many foods have been supplemented with Vitamin D, but this has not resulted in an overall increase in Vitamin D levels. This is likely because some food and supplement manufacturers rely on an inexpensive form of synthetic Vitamin D called "ergocalciferol" – a form of Vitamin D-2. Food sources of Vitamin D and supplements such as TriVita’s Bone Builder and VitaCal-Mag D use Vitamin D-3 (cholecalciferol), which is the same form that your body makes from sunshine.

What to do?
If your bones are tender or if you have a low blood level of Vitamin D, the solution may be as simple as increasing your exposure to sunlight (see Is the Sun our Enemy? in the "Learn More" section of this report). Spend 20 minutes daily in the sun with 40 percent of your skin surface exposed. Morning sun is best, evening sun is acceptable, but in any case, never allow your skin to burn.

When supplementing with Vitamin D, always choose D-3
It is also good to remember that this is a "fat soluble" vitamin. That means that you can store the nutrient for many days. I will often suggest two capsules of TriVita’s Bone Builder or two tablets of VitaCal-Mag D to be taken at every meal. I suggest reducing the recommended dosage to one capsule or tablet per meal after six months if the tenderness has disappeared from the sternum and shin bones. It is good to get a blood test for appropriate blood levels of Vitamin D and use this as a factor to help you structure a supplement program.

Recommended Intake

Age Group (years)	Adequate Intake
	Females	Males
1 - 50	200 IU	200 IU
51 - 70	400 IU	400 IU
70 +	600 IU	600 IU

You can also include Vitamin D-rich foods in your diet:

Food	Serving size	Vitamin D content (IU)
Cod liver oil	1 Tbs.	1,360
Salmon, cooked	3 ½ ounces	360
Mackerel, cooked	3 ½ ounces	345
Sardines, canned in oil	3 ½ ounces	270
Milk, Vitamin D-fortified	1 cup	98
Margarine, fortified	1 Tbs.	60
Liver, beef, cooked	3 ½ ounces	30
Egg	1 large	25

Eventually, health comes down to healthy habits practiced every day. Every day we should nourish our body and nurture our spirit for sustained health.

Are You Getting Enough Vitamin D?

Not getting enough Vitamin D during the winter months?
Make sure you get healthy amounts of it year-round


Practically every day another benefit of Vitamin D is revealed. Vitamin D is created when our skin is exposed to sunshine. It is also present in our diet, mainly in cold-water fish and dark green vegetables. It is primarily responsible for transporting minerals to our bones and keeping them strong. A primary symptom of Vitamin D deficiency is sore bone.

Let's talk about Vitamin D and its relationship to brain health. This is in response to a recent newspaper headline that read, “Vitamin D Linked to Parkinson’s disease.” Now, as you read that title, do you think the article is reporting on the benefits or the dangers of Vitamin D?

Vitamin D and Parkinson’s
You won’t have to wait until the end of the article to find out: Vitamin D is beneficial in protecting against Parkinson’s disease. In fact, low levels of Vitamin D are associated with:

* Neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
* Autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis
* Metabolic disorders such as diabetes.

Vitamin D is formed when sunlight strikes the skin and interacts with cholesterol. Its main purpose is to shuttle calcium and other minerals to the bones.

Vitamin D enters the brain tissues surrounded by healthy fats. Just as Vitamin D is necessary for proper calcium absorption into the bones, Vitamin D aids in the delivery of good fats into the brain where they serve as building blocks for healthy brain structure.

Vitamin D – a messenger
Information is carried by a number of messengers inside your body, including proteins and fats. Vitamin D can also act like a messenger, telling the cells how much work to do.

This may be compared to building a house. Proteins give specific instructions in the same way a carpenter may decide how best to connect walls and windows and doors. Fats may serve as the building materials for the entire house. Vitamin D serves as the general contractor to determine how much building should be done at any specific time.

We certainly need proteins and protein complexes of Vitamin B-12 to create the structures making up our brain. We also need the fats found in Omega 3 fish oils to serve as raw materials and general information on brain repair. We need Vitamin D to help develop our brain when we are young and to repair it as we age.

Why you need to work harder to get your wintertime supply of Vitamin D
We get Vitamin D from sunlight, foods and supplements. Because we are exposed to less sunshine in the winter than in the summer, we need to be more vigilant about supplementing with Vitamin D and exposing our skin to sunshine whenever practical. Most doctors who recommend Vitamin D explain that cold and flu outbreaks during winter are directly related to Vitamin D deficiency.

The Key to Stress Resistance: Adaptogens

All the foods we eat have nutrient characteristics that interact with our body. Some foods contain dense concentrations of vitamins and minerals. Others have healthy fats and proteins. Many fruits have been concentrated into beverages because of their intense antioxidant properties.

Each food sends a message to your body about how it may benefit the body under various circumstances. The distinct message of each food is drawn from the surroundings in which the food was grown.

Adaptogens: an amazing discovery

Adaptogens are amazing plants that draw their unique message by adapting to their harsh surroundings. They were first discovered in 1908 after a comet entered Earth’s atmosphere in the Tunguska area of Russia. The comet super-heated the air and exploded with such force that entire forests were leveled. The super-heated air and water sterilized the earth so that nothing would grow.

The Tunguska area is in Siberia – a harsh environment for vegetation. Only the most robust plants grow there under the best of circumstances. After the soil was sterilized in this explosion, years passed before plant life once again thrived in the region. The plants that succeeded were those most able to adapt to stressful conditions. The people that were nourished by these plants also showed an amazing resilience to their harsh, demanding environments. The message in the ingredients of the plants was “stress resistance.”

Scientists studied these plants for decades. A Russian scientist, Dr. Nicolai Lazarov, “decoded” the message within these plants that imparted stress resistance to people who ate them. It is said that he decoded more than 4,000 plants from around the world and tested them according to simple standards. These standards determined if a plant could be classified as an “adaptogen”:

The plant must be non-toxic
The plant must increase resistance to physical, chemical or biological stress
The plant must normalize the physiology.
The third point – the plant must normalize the physiology – is really quite fascinating. It means, for instance, that if a person has too much acid in their stomach because of stress, an adaptogen must reduce it. It also means that if a person has too little acid in their stomach, the same adaptogen must increase it! The same is true for blood pressure: bring it down if it’s too high, bring it up if it’s too low. That is an amazing property!

Adaptogen research
Of course, Siberia is not the only harsh environment on earth. Other extreme locations produce plants with the qualities of an adaptogen. Research now includes 10 plants that meet all the qualities of an adaptogen. And, adaptogen research continues today. Much of this research is still coordinated by the University of St. Petersburg, Russia.

In a study of physical stress, a single serving of adaptogens significantly increased working capacity for 4 to 6 hours. The study also measured mental performance and found that the ability to stay focused under stress dramatically improved with adaptogens.
Another study measured social comfort and human interactions within a community. The ability to socialize and all markers for mental health improved dramatically with adaptogens. This really illustrates to me why some tend to isolate themselves as they age – for many aging people, it’s just too stressful to socialize. A real miracle of adaptogens seems to be that it makes people want to be with others as it eases their anxiety.
Being fearful, nervous and agitated can harm your body and mind. Anticipating stress is as bad as experiencing stress. Living with a sense of dread disrupts digestion, changes blood pressure, causes irregular heartbeat and interferes with metabolism. One study showed that adaptogens reduced stress in people with generalized anxiety disorder; the results were similar to what people in clinical trials experienced with prescription medications!
Adaptogens are very potent, powerful foods.

The message of adaptogens
When a person is under chronic stress, a switch in the brain turns on the systems needed to cope and turns off the systems considered “unnecessary.” The first systems to be turned off by stress include digestion, metabolism, immune system function and circulation. Chronic stress sends a message to these organs to remain off until the stress is over.

The message conveyed by adaptogens is: Crisis ended – now turn my functions back on! That’s why people taking adaptogens have such a variety of healthy responses.

As you go through your daily routine, remember that every food you eat, every beverage you drink and every thought you think washes over your DNA as information. These messages influence how you function now and in the future. Send the right messages to your cells with stress-busting choices of food, drink and thoughts. And, build a bulwark against stress with adaptogens every day!