Vitamin D supplementation: health benefits and safety risks

¶ … Vitamin D Supplementation: Health & Safety Issues

Audience: General primarily female audience interested in health and nutrition

Description

The magazine selected for this project is Health, a national magazine available by subscription as well as through direct sale; the magazine also maintains a free public website, www.Health.com, where readers can obtain additional information on featured topics and advertised products and services. Health magazine covers general health and nutrition topics for a lay public and is geared primarily for an adult female audience of all ages. Regular features cover issues of nutritional health, diet and weight loss, cuisine, exercise and fitness, beauty, and general advice on topical issues that comprise the full range of everyday life.

The magazine was selected because vitamin D deficiency is more common among women than men, particularly pregnant women in whom insufficient vitamin D can inhibit healthy weight gain during pregnancy and also prolong labor. Various studies also indicate that nursing infants whose mothers with too little vitamin D in their breast milk build less healthy bone and are more susceptible to developing diabetes in childhood.

Additionally, Health magazine was selected because the market of nutritional products and vitamin supplementation for males is saturated with fitness and muscle-building products advertised in numerous fitness magazines, most of which are also published by interested entities that also sell nutritional and exercise products for males. Health magazine is typically read in the home where it is also available to the entire household I addition to its primary audience of professional adult women and fulltime homemakers.

The Health Benefits of Vitamin D

Many of us are already familiar with the importance of some vitamins, like vitamin C, which prevents scurvy, but we are often less aware of how important other vitamins are for our health. On the other hand, too much of a good thing can sometimes be even more harmful than too little. In that regard, it is very important to understand the role of vitamin D, both because of its role in maintaining our health, as well as because of the potential for harm associated with excessive supplementation.

Unlike other vitamins and minerals, vitamin D is not readily available through diet because its primary source is natural sunlight. The U.S. FDA recommends a daily dose of 200 IU, which according to medical authorities, is sufficient to protect against osteomalacia, a medical condition characterized by softening of the bones. However, because vitamin D requirements fluctuate depending on how much sunlight a person receives and are difficult to satisfy through diet alone, 200 IU is considered the RDA in the absence of regular exposure to natural sunlight.

Vitamin D is necessary for the proper absorption of calcium in the process of new bone formation, which is why many supplements combine the two together. Research strongly suggests that up to twice that amount of vitamin D may actually be necessary to protect against the risk of other conditions and diseases, including osteoporosis, secondary hyperparathyroidism, multiple sclerosis, hypertension, and several types of cancers. The recent increase the disease rickets has been linked to the decreasing amount of sunlight exposure since the realization that sunlight is the main cause of skin cancers. Previously, doctors typically recommended

The Potential Dangers of Too Much Vitamin D

Unlike most other vitamins, vitamin D is fat soluble instead of being water soluble. That means that if you consume too much vitamin a or Vitamin D, toxic levels can build up in the body tissues instead of simply being excreted the way that too much vitamin B or vitamin C are disposed of by the body naturally.

In nature, we might safely receive as much as 10,000 IU of vitamin D through natural exposure to sunlight, but in the concentrated forms in which supplemental vitamins are available commercially, it is fairly easy to receive far more than even that amount of vitamin D Medical authorities have not determined the ultimate consequences of excessive vitamin D consumption, but note that increased kidney stone formation is among the results observed. Therefore, it is equally important to avoid over supplementation with any vitamin, but especially fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin a and vitamin D