In recent years vitamin D has emerged as a star of the “vitamin” world. For example, there are currently over 800 studies showing vitamin D’s effectiveness against cancer. Optimizing your vitamin D levels can literally cut your risk of several cancers by 50 percent!
Further, middle aged and elderly people with high levels of vitamin D could reduce their chances of developing heart disease or diabetes by 43 percent.
Scientists have actually identified a total of nearly 3,000 genes that are upregulated by vitamin D. Because vitamin D is actually a “prohormone,” which your body produces from cholesterol, it influences your entire body — receptors that respond to the vitamin have been found in almost every type of human cell, from your brain to your bones.
So what modern science has now realized is that vitamin D does more than just aid in the absorption of calcium and bone formation, it is also involved in multiple repair and maintenance functions, touches thousands of different genes, regulates your immune system, and much, much more.
Just one example of an important gene that vitamin D up-regulates is your ability to fight infections, as well as chronic inflammation. It produces over 200 antimicrobial peptides, the most important of which is cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum antibiotic.
This is one of the explanations for why it’s so effective against colds and influenza.
In addition, since vitamin D also modulates (balances) your immune response, it can prevent an overreaction in the form of inflammation, which can lead to a variety of autoimmune disorders, such as Crohn’s disease for example. Research has even uncovered that vitamin D may be an effective therapeutic agent to treat or prevent allergy to a common mold.
Among the many other benefits that research is revealing, low levels of vitamin D also double your risk of stroke, which is the third leading cause of death in the United States.
This adds to research that also found vitamin D deficiency is associated with arterial stiffness, a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. A separate study from Finland also found that those with the lowest vitamin D levels had a 25 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease or stroke, and when only stroke was looked at, those with the lowest levels had twice the risk as those with the highest.
So you can see that optimizing your vitamin D levels is easily one of the best ways to help prevent a myriad of diseases and conditions, ranging from heart disease, diabetes and cancer to autoimmune disorders, stroke, colds and flu.
