For years Vitamin D was a neglected vitamin (actually Vitamin D is a hormone). The Functional Medical community began testing and treating vitamin D deficiency about 10 years ago, myself included, and medical establishment doctors followed suit for about the last 5 years. During this time articles have been coming out almost monthly about another beneficial aspect about vitamin D. Some of these articles in mainstream journals have implicated low vitamin D as a risk factor for a variety of conditions, including:
Rheumatoid arthritis Systemic Lupus Alopecia areata Mood disorders
Type 1 diabetes Cardiovascular disease Multiple Sclerosis Alzheimer’s
Breast, prostate, and skin cancers Metastases in breast cancer Influenza
That’s quite a list!
But in the last few months, several new studies have shown more reasons to be sure your vitamin D level is adequate.
Now it has been shown that low vitamin D in childhood is linked to future arterial calcification. In a study published on February 10, 2015 in the Journal of Endocrinology, over 2000 children aged 3 to 18 were tested for vitamin D in 1980. Children in the lowest one-quarter for vitamin D levels, about 15 nanograms per milliliter, were nearly twice as likely to have thickening of the carotid artery as those in the other three quarters, when examined up to age 45.
The second study from the Dana – Farber Cancer Institute in Boston published in Gut in 2014, showed that Vitamin D may interact with the immune system to prevent the growth of colorectal malignancies. The higher the blood level of vitamin D in the participants, the less likely they were to develop Colon cancer.
There are cells called T-lymphocytes, which can target tumor cells and limit their growth. The more of these cells there are in the tumor, the better the prognosis. Vitamin D has an effect on immunity and that may be the reason.
