All About the Benefits of Vitamin D

Your body makes vitamin D when sunlight hits your skin. Too much sun, as we all know, is a risk factor for skin cancer. Not enough sun, as not everybody knows, is a risk factor for dangerously low levels of vitamin D.

And what's one of the major results of low vitamin D? Increased risk of skin cancer!

Scientists have long suspected that one of the benefits of vitamin D is fighting cancer. Decades of research now suggest that vitamin D protects against skin cancer and several other kinds of cancer by promoting "apoptosis."

Vitamin D in effect tells the cancer cell to switch itself off and stop reproducing. It may in some cases even cause cancer cells to revert to normal cells.

And the anti-cancer benefits of vitamin D are just the beginning. Other potential applications of vitamin D include:

* Alzheimer's Disease. Preliminary studies show that vitamin D may increase the rate of cellular repair in the brain 200%.

* Prostate cancer. One of the benefits of vitamin D is a special anti-cancer potency in the prostate.

* Breast cancer. Women who consume 500 IU of vitamin D a day from low-fat dairy products have a greatly reduced risk of developing breast cancer before menopause.

And the major application of vitamin D? Bone health!

You need calcium for healthy bones, but your bones can't absorb calcium without the hormones your body makes with the benefits of vitamin D.

Researchers at Harvard University recently completed a study of 72,337 women over 18 years. They found that women who consumed a high dosage of vitamin D food sources and vitamin D supplements (about 500 IU total) had a greatly lowered risk of broken hips.

The Harvard researchers concluded that neither milk nor calcium is enough to maintain bone health and avoid vitamin D deficiency symptoms, and that taking vitamin D supplements is a good idea.

No fracture is more likely to lead to death and disability than a broken hip. The benefits of vitamin D definitely help prevent this condition.

And although the vitamin D deficiency symptom osteoporosis is more commonly associated with women than with men, over 5 million men a year in North America alone develop this disease.

Who may need supplemental vitamin D?

The skin's ability to convert vitamin to its active form begins to decline at age 20. Your body's production of vitamin D goes down as soon as you become an adult. By the time you are 65, your body's production of vitamin D with the help of the sun goes down as much as 60%. Improper diet, menopause, and lack of sun also contribute to vitamin D deficiency.

So who needs supplemental D? The short answer is, just about every adult. Vitamin D is especially important to persons over 65, women past menopause, and anyone who uses sunscreen on a regular basis.

Can you get too many benefits vitamin D? Is there a real risk of vitamin D toxicity?

The short answer is, it's not likely.

Your body can never overproduce vitamin D. You could take enough vitamin D to experience nausea, rashes, vomiting, constipation, and weight loss-but you would have to take about 100 times the recommended daily dose, over 40,000 IU per day.

Oktay zadam is the webmaster for nutritional vitamin supplements where you will find all the information you need on nutritional health supplements and how they can benefit your health.

Benefits Of Vitamin C
Vitamin C prevents many debilitating diseases and increases the bodys immunity. It is more popular as a cell protector, immun...

Tips on Buying Vitamin Online
We are already know that vitamins are needed daily to keep our body healthy. Finding them is also not a difficult matter sine...

Vitamin C
Vitamin C prevents many debilitating diseases and increases the bodys immunity. This vitamin can be taken with or without foo...

Cholesterol Health
If I used the word "Guggullipid" would you know what I was talking about? Would you know the benefits of Beta-sitosterol or D...

The Best Ways to Shop for Vitamin Supplements
At one time you could only get vitamin supplements with a medical prescription through a drug store. However since there are ...

Topical Vitamin C
Topical Vitamin C is one of the most recent developments in the world of medical science, as an aid for skin protection. Vita...

An Overview of the B5 Vitamin
The B5 vitamin is also known as Pantothenic Acid. The B5 vitamin is the most prolific of all the vitamins and is found in eve...

Nutritional Supplements: What Do You Know About Garlic?
Garlic is not just for flavoring; it plays a document role in disease prevention. Nutritional supplements containing garlic c...

The Benefits of Vitamin C Skin Products
A popular anti skin aging ingredient is Vitamin C. In anti skin aging treatment Vitamin C is the most effective ingredient. T...

Vitamin A For Better Eczema Control
Weve all seen the scaly itchy skin associated with eczema. Perhaps youve even had eczema at some point or suffer from it chro...

Vitamin B6: Your Health Depends on It
Vitamin B6 benefits you in maybe more ways than any other vitamin. Vitamin B6 has been called the "mighty vite" because of al...

The Importance of the B12 Vitamin
Also known as cobalamin, vitamin B12 is a part of the b vitamin family which helps to keep the body in good shape. Foods such...

Vitamin B12 Creams
Vitamin B12 creams are the most recent applications of this vitamins utility. Ongoing studies in this field have claimed the ...

Vitamins for Health Vitamin C
Most people associate Vitamin C with the ability to fight off colds and infections. Theres a medical basis for that associati...

Liquid Multi Vitamins are a Good Policy to Insure Your Good Health, Especially for Diabetics
For diabetics a multi vitamin is an absolute must, providing blood sugar control while reducing the development of diabetic c...

Nutrition, Health Supplements And Other Scary Words
No more running away from a boring diet- heres an easy way to maintain your health.Vitamins, nutrition and health supplements...

Types of Vitamins
Humans get most of their needed vitamins in the foods that they eat. Those are the bodys ingested vitamins. Of those ingested...

Mangosteen Fruit Benefits
There are many mangosteen fruit benefits, many of which have been utilized for centuries in folk medicine. The mangosteen fru...

Vitamin D: Can it Really Keep You Cancer Free?
Once only associated with strong bones and teeth, new scientific research is finding that Vitamin D can cut your risk of deve...

Why Vitamin A Is So Crucial To Your Overall Health
Casimir Funk was a Polish biochemist that discovered vitamins in 1912, the first one was specifically vitamin A. Funk came up...