Quantum
HEALTH
Issue 9 February 2011
Vitamin D receptors are everywhere in the body. It has many functions, from affecting mood to helping to prevent cancer. Let’s look at a few of these health-benefiting functions.
Vitamin D can regulate up to 2,000 different genes, control cell growth and other cellular functions, produce insulin in the pancreas, and regulate production of the hormone renin in the kidneys.
Vitamin D stimulates the production of mood- elevating serotonin, which is why vitamin D is now known to help reduce depression.
Adequate levels of vitamin D can improve fertility and safeguard pregnancy.
It can help reduce inflammation, bolster the immune system, and protect against infectious diseases such as flu and tuberculosis.
An adequate level of vitamin D may help guard against obesity. Fat cells have vitamin D receptors, but vitamin D can get trapped in the fat cells and essentially become unavailable for use by the body. (In fact, the more overweight you are, the greater your chance for being deficient in vitamin D.) It also works in the complex metabolic processes that help to control appetite: when you have had enough to eat, fat cells secrete a hormone called leptin that sends the “full” signal to your brain and so allows you to push away from the table. A lack of vitamin D will interfere with this appetite-suppressing hormone.
Along with calcium, vitamin D helps prevent osteoporosis and improves overall bone health. It helps the body absorb calcium, which is why vitamin D should be taken with calcium supplements.
It can help alleviate symptoms of or provide treatment for skin disorders, such as psoriasis.
Vitamin D may help reduce the risk of strokes and dementia, boost memory, and support muscle strength. It is known as a premier anti-aging hormone/vitamin.
Vitamin D affects the development process of cancer. If a cell begins to lose control of its own growth cycle, as cancer cells do, and is on the path to becoming a malignant cancer cell, activated vitamin D can come to the rescue by either turning on genes to control cell growth or inducing apoptosis (cell death). If the tumor takes hold and begins to grow, active vitamin D has one more trick up its sleeve: it prevents blood vessels from forming to supply nutrition to the cancer cells they need to survive. Once the malignant process begins, unfortunately, cancer cleverly develops systems to become resistant to beneficial effect of the active form of vitamin D.
Survival rates for people with cancer also have been correlated to their blood level of vitamin D, with those with adequate or high levels surviving the longest on average. For example, Dr. Esther John estimates, based on the meticulous analysis of breast cancer statistics from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, that increased sun exposure alone could potentially reduce the incidence and death rate of breast cancer in the United States by 35 percent to 75 percent. She reports that the incidence of new breast cancer cases might be reduced by 70,000 to 150,000 each year if women were raiseed their level of vitamin D to recommended or higher levels. Dr. Kimmie Ng, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, reported in an article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2008, that high blood levels of vitamin D increased colon cancer patients’ survival rate by 48 percent.
58 Quantum Health
www.quantumhealthmagazine.com
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