Vitamin D protect your body!

Why is it Vitamin D so vital and essential to your body? How does it protect our body? It sound very obvious like a science fiction movie... eh.. let me explain in this fictitious manner... ( me not a dietitian or whatsoever related profession )

Imagine a picture of an army of robot guards roams the corridors of an immense structure. When a dangerous intruder is detected inside the walls, the robots activate their antennas, ready to receive the signal that will mobilize them into action. When the signal arrives, the robots act swiftly to defeat and remove the intruder.

But if the signal doesn't arrive, the robots can't activate their defensive network.

Similarly, in your body, the "robots" are known as T cells--the killer cells of your immune system. When a foreign pathogen enters, T cells activate a vitamin D receptor. All that's needed now is a sufficient level of vitamin D in the blood stream.

When T cells find their D, they power up, go to work, and the good guys win.


For years, scientists have known that vitamin D plays an indispensable role in controlling disease. And for years they've been asking: How does D do it?

Obviously, scientists have known the importance of D for quite a long time. So how is it that so many researchers, completely independent of one another, seem to have decided all at once to investigate this remarkable vitamin?

Doctors have known for many years that severe vitamin D deficiencies can cause the bones to weaken -- that's called rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults.

Vitamin D is important for immune functions,people with vitamin D deficiencies are less healthy and more prone to infection. Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency include muscle pain, spasms and cramps, extreme fatigue, depression, mood swings, brain fogginess and disrupted sleep.

What vitamin D does, in simple terms, is help cells communicate with one another, as well as helping different parts of a single cell to carry on a conversation.

Another most important function of vitamin D is to control how much calcium your body absorbs from the foods you consume. Your body use calcium to build strong teeth and bones and to strengthen the nerves and muscles. Vitamin D maintains a sufficient amount of calcium in the blood and strengthens the immune system which may be a contributing factor in reducing the risk of contracting cancer, especially colon cancer.

Food such as milk, nuts, eggs, fish are great source of vitamin D. But the best supplement is the natural source from God, that is the sunlight around 8am - 9:30am and between 4:30 to 5:30 pm. Actually, with all the media coverage about the dangers of getting too much sun many are actually being deprived of the essential vitamin that can only be obtained from exposure to sunlight. Most people work indoors, and many others fear cancer due to sun exposure without sunscreen, therefore, making it difficult to maintain a healthy level of vitamin D.

So let's review the best ways to keep D levels high:
1. Whenever possible, get just a few minutes of direct sunlight exposure every day
2. Eat good quality "fatty" fish (tuna, salmon, mackerel) three or more times each week
3. Take a cod liver oil supplement or another supplement that delivers generous amounts of vitamin D3

For more info: go to the link to read http://www.womentowomen.com/healthynutrition/vitamind.aspx