Symptoms of vitamin d deficiency You probably know that the primary source
of vitamin D is right outside your door and up in the sky.
Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium.
Calcium is one of the main building blocks of bone.
The sun helps synthesize vitamin D in the skin — promoting the growth of strong muscles
and bones, lowering blood pressure, and slowing the progression of multiple sclerosis.
But just as vitamin D can promote good health, a lack of it may lead to health issues.
For a number of reasons, many people aren’t getting enough vitamin D to stay healthy.
This is called vitamin D deficiency.
Here are 13 signs, symptoms and risk factors for Vitamin D deficiency.
Low immunity: Science shows us that even immune cells contain
Vitamin D receptors, demonstrating that Vitamin D exerts some level of influence over our
immunity.
One study found that Vitamin D3 supplementation of children during the winter months decreased
the outbreaks of flu.
So if you’re getting sniffy more often than you’d like, it could be due to lack of Vitamin
D. Wound Healing:
Slow healing of wounds after surgery or injury may be a sign that vitamin D levels are too
low.
Vitamin increases production of compounds that are crucial for forming a new skin as
part of the wound-healing process.
It found that those with severe vitamin D deficiency were more likely to have higher
levels of inflammatory markers.
Weight gain: If you have recently become overweight or
obese, this could be a sign of low Vitamin D. Heavier people will also need more Vitamin
D than a lighter person.
This is true if you are heavy due to muscle mass.
Bone and Back Pain: Vitamin D is involved in maintaining bone
health through a number of mechanisms.
For one, it improves your body's absorption of calcium.
Bone pain and lower back pain may be signs of inadequate vitamin D levels in the blood.
Weak Muscles: In more severe deficiency (known as osteomalacia),
there may be more severe pain and also a weakness.
Muscle weakness may cause difficulty in climbing stairs or getting up from the floor or a low
chair, or can lead to the person walking with a waddling pattern.
Depression: A study published reports that inadequate
levels of vitamin D in the bloodstream will double the chances of a depression diagnosis.
After monitoring more than 31,000 study subjects, researchers noted a drastic loss of function
in the hippocampus area of the brain (which harbors vitamin D receptors and helps regulate
mood) due to low vitamin D levels compared to study participants with healthy vitamin
D levels.
Forehead Sweats: Travel back in time a century or so and you’d
find visiting doctors asking new mothers about how sweaty they found their heads.
No joke.
“It’s one of the first, classic signs of vitamin D deficiency.”
Hair loss: Telogen effluvium, is the loss of hair due
to excessive shedding – about 100 to 200 hairs per day.
Among the possible causes of TE include vitamin D deficiency.
One study concluded that low ferritin and vitamin D levels were associated with both
types of hair loss.
Thyroid problem: Autoimmune thyroiditis occurs when your immune
system mistakes your thyroid for foreign tissue and produces antibodies against it.
Researchers found that patients with autoimmune thyroiditis had significantly low vitamin
D, and that it correlated with thyroid antibodies.
They concluded that vitamin D deficiency may be involved in hypothyroidism.
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