Vitamin D and Immunity!
We've been looking at all things immunity lately, and with good reason! Back to school, those still working from home sitting all day, cold and flu season approaching are all reasons to be looking at supporting our immune health. Here we deep dive vitamin D and why it's such an important yet often deficient vitamin!
W H Y T E S T
Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, meaning it can accumulate in the body to toxic levels. It is an expensive test to run through our medicare system and therefore extremely difficult to have approved. Unfortunately, this has perpetuated an attitude of unstructured dosing and unsupervised dosing among the population. Although clinically we do often times see deficiency more than excess, it is still important we avoid the latter. Not to mention, the maintenance dosing provided without explicit deficiency is not enough to correct it.
Vitamin D receptors are located on every tissue in the body, making it an essential nutrient for every system to operate optimally. It plays a significant role in women’s health as deficiencies have been correlated with increased rates of infertility, fibroids and endometriosis. Vitamin D deficiency also contributes to autoimmune disease and overall risk of chronic disease.
Bottom line, testing with vitamin D is always better than guessing. Assuming deficiency could lead to dosing to excess, or missing a deficiency and not dosing high enough to correct it. We highly recommend vitamin D testing in those with pronounced low energy, low mood, low immunity, in preconception and women having pelvic pain and heavy bleeding.
Important Information for Supplementation:
Dose: It is important to determine if you are deficient in vitamin D. Doses to replenish a deficiency will differ drastically from a maintenance dose. It is recommended most people have a maintenance dose of vitamin D throughout the winter, in the absence of deficiency.
Type: we often recommend an oil based form of vitamin D. It is a fat soluble vitamin and therefore the absorption increases when it is suspended in an oil base. If you are currently supplementing with tablets, we recommend taking them with a healthy fat source (i.e nuts, nut butter, avocado,olive oil etc) to help improve the absorption, until you can switch to a liquid vitamin D.
Vitamin D's Impact on Mood
Vitamin D’s role in mood regulation. It has been shown that vitamin D deficiency plays a role in the onset of seasonal affective disorder. Vitamin D regulates genes which are responsible for release of some neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain that play a role in our mood regulation. Research on Seasonal Affective Disorder suggests vitamin D deficiency is linked to decrease in the production of serotonin.
Vitamin D and Reproductive Health
40% of women of reproductive age are deficient in Vitamin D. Vitamin D status is an important modifiable risk factor to identify when working with women having trouble conceiving.
Vitamin D receptors are found in the ovaries, uterus and placenta. It plays a particularly important role in the implantation of the embryo to the uterine wall. Recent studies following women undergoing IVF have found increased pregnancy rates in women who have adequate vitamin D levels versus those who are deficient. As East Coast Canadians it is particularly important to be mindful of vitamin D status as we are at risk of deficiency based on geographical location. A theoretical study proposed the efficacy of Vitamin D in reproductive health in knowing that reduced vitamin D lead to inflammation in the uterus. It proposed that due to the lack of vitamin D, there could be an increases risk of fibroids, endometriosis, and reduced implantation on a theoretical basis as another explanation for these conditions!
Endometriosis: Studies have shown that a relatively high rate of women with ovarian endometriosis also have low Vitamin D levels. Additionally, a significant correlation between D3 serum levels and the diameter of ovarian endometrioma was found meaning that the less vitamin D, the larger the tissue outgrowth.
Breast Cancer:
We have discussed the importance of vitamin D in breast cancer prevention but a recent study has also shown that vitamin D levels may also affect outcomes and most importantly, it shows that improving vitamin D status is women who are deficient at the time of diagnosis improves outcomes as well.
The study looked at vitamin D levels in patients with breast cancer at diagnosis and then followed them for four years. The patients were divided according to their vitamin D status at diagnosis into a deficient (<20 ng/ml) and a non-deficient (≥20 ng/ml) group. At follow-up, patients were categorized into the four following groups according to vitamin D status alterations: persistently deficient, improved, deteriorated and persistently non-deficient. At diagnosis, 118 patients were classified into the deficient group and 351 into the non-deficient group. After a median follow-up period of 85.8±31.0 months, the patients with advanced-stage disease or an older age in the non-deficient group showed a significantly better survival compared with the deficient group. Furthermore, at the 1-year follow-up of vitamin D status, the persistently non-deficient group and the improved group had better survival compared with the other two groups.
The authors conclude: "Our results suggest that maintaining an optimal (vitamin) D status at diagnosis and during the 1-year follow-up period is important for improving breast cancer patient survival."
Autoimmune and inflammatory conditions: Evidence shows that vitamin D is involved in many biological processes that regulate immune response in the body. These effects occur on multiple immune cell lineages, and strongly suggest that vitamin D could play important roles in immune-mediated disorders in autoimmunity. There is promising research happening using vitamin D as an intervention in autoimmune conditions such as MS, Type I Diabetes, and SLE as patients with these conditions are marked as having low vitamin D serum levels. Vitamin D has recently been found to play an important role in the modulation of the immune system and inflammatory responses by regulating the production of inflammatory proteins, and inhibiting the proliferation of pro-inflammatory cells, both of which are crucial for the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases.
Testing for vitamin D is not common practice in the conventional medical system, and most Canadians are currently in a deficient state. We provide vitamin D testing in office. Book now with our Naturopathic Doctors to determine your vitamin D levels and how to start supplementing appropriately - fill out this form to have your vitamin D levels tested today!
Resources:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09513590.2016.1239254
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6047889/#:~:text=Vitamin%20D%20deficiency%20
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09513590.2016.1239254
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5491340/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22275473/
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