In recent years vitamin D has emerged as a star of the “vitamin” world. Vitamin D deficiency is a growing epidemic across the world and is contributing to many chronic debilitating diseases. Optimizing your vitamin D levels can cut your risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes, writes Dr Mercola.
The Astonishing Power of Vitamin D to Transform Your Health
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.
How Does Vitamin D Do What it Does?
Vitamin D is actually a “prohormone,” which your body produces from cholesterol. Because it is a prohormone, vitamin D 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 anti microbial 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.
Read full post at Mercola.com