A fat-soluble vitamin, Vitamin D is naturally present in very few foods, added to others and is usually made available as a dietary supplement. Many of us do not know its importance in healthy living. <.p>
Apart from the aforesaid, it is also produced endogenously when ultraviolet rays from sunlight strike the skin and trigger vitamin D synthesis. Vitamin D produced from sun exposure, food, and supplements is biologically inert and must therefor undergo two hydroxylations in the body for activation and effective. The first occurs in the liver which converts vitamin D to 25-hydroxyvitamin D, also known as calcidiol while the second occurs primarily in the kidney and forms the physiologically active 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, also known as calcitriol.
What exactly does Vitamin D do in our body, you may ask. Essential for promoting calcium absorption in the gut and maintaining adequate serum calcium and phosphate concentrations, it is to enable normal mineralization of bone and prevent hypocalcemic tetany. It is also needed for bone growth and bone remodeling by osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Lacking in or without sufficient vitamin D, bones can become the target of many old-age related problems. Bones become thin, brittle, or misshapen while Vitamin D sufficiency prevents rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Together with calcium, vitamin D also helps protect older adults from osteoporosis.
Its other roles in human health include modulation of neuromuscular and immune function and reduction of inflammation. Many genes encoding proteins that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis are being modulated in part by vitamin D.
Lacking in Vitamin D has become the center of attention of many scientists today in finding the initial causes and development of cancer. Current scientific model seem to assume that a genetic mutation begins the genesis of a malignancy. Could this assumption be wrong and disputed? Could scientists at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California (UC) in San Diego unlock some other possibility?
In its online reporting in the current Annals of Epidemiology, a host of research suggests cancer develops when cells lose the ability to stick together in a healthy and normal way, and the key factor to this initial triggering of a malignancy could well be a lack of vitamin D. Researchers have documented that with enough vitamin D present, cells adhere to one another in tissue and act as normal, mature epithelial cells. However, should there be a deficiency of vitamin D, cells can lose this stick-to-each other quality as well as their identity as differentiated cells; resulting in their reversion to a dangerous stem cell-like state and become cancerous.
How is this possible? Vitamin D may halt the first stage of the cancer process by re-establishing intercellular junctions in malignancies having an intact vitamin D receptor. Vitamin D rich-diet and supplements (2,000 IU/day) tend to restore appropriate levels of vitamin D in the prevention of cancer development. Thus, the “cure” for cancer already exists.
Researchers have postulated a new model of cancer’s cause; dubbed as DINOMIT. Each letter stands for a different phase of cancer development: “D” refers to disjunction, or loss of communication between cells; “I” is for initiation, where genetic mutations begin to play a role; “N” refers to natural selection of the fastest-reproducing cancer cells; “O” is a for overgrowth of cells; “M” stands for metastasis, the spread of a malignancy to other tissues; “I” refers to involution and “T” for transition, both dormant states that may occur in cancer and can potentially be altered by increasing vitamin D. The first event in cancer is loss of communication among cells due to, among other things, low vitamin D and calcium levels. This loss may play a key role in cancer by disrupting the communication between cells that is essential to healthy cell turnover, allowing more aggressive cancer cells to take over.
Scientists point to a host of studies that show an apparent beneficial effect of vitamin D (and, to some extent, calcium) on cancer risk and survival of patients with breast, colorectal and prostate cancer. There is an association between a lack of sunlight exposure, low vitamin D and breast cancer. Linkages between increased levels of vitamin D3 or markers of vitamin D have a bearing on the lower risk for breast, colon, ovarian and kidney cancers. Women who are deficient in vitamin D at the time they are diagnosed with breast cancer are nearly 75 percent more likely to die from the disease than women with sufficient vitamin D levels. Moreover, their cancer is twice as likely to metastasize to other parts of the body. Healthy levels of vitamin D have been found to slash the risk of numerous cancers by 77 percent.
Genetic link between multiple sclerosis (MS) and vitamin D metabolism is prominent. Being an auto-immune disease that targets the central nervous system, it has affected many people. Vitamin D is linked to the gene on chromosome 12 which is vital in vitamin D metabolism. Vitamin D is critical in the regulation of the immune system because it acts as an anti-inflammatory and inflammation is what occurs in MS. MS prevalence increases in regions further away from the equator, as does the incidence of vitamin D deficiencies.<.p>
Vitamin D can be toxic in high concentrations, but toxicity cannot result from sunlight exposure, because the body ceases production when the needed bodily levels have been reached. Thus, exposing oneself to daily sunlight has its plus points towards maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
