Vitamin D (비타민 D)

Vitamin D is nutrient that is essential to good health. This vitamin helps your body absorb calcium, which is necessary for forming and maintaining strong bones and teeth. Vitamin D may also help protect your body from osteoporosis, cancer, high blood pressure, and several autoimmune disease.

 

There are two forms of vitamin D that are important to the human body: calciferol, or vitamin D2, and cholecalciferol, or vitamin D3. You can get vitamin D2 by eating foods that naturally contain it, such as fish, eggs, and cod liver. You can obtain both vitamin D2, and vitamin D3 from food supplements or foods that are fortified, such as milk. Your body can make vitamin D3 when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet B rays from sunlight. As little as 10 minutes of sun exposure a day should prevent you from being vitamin D deficient.

 

Populations at risk of vitamin D deficiency include the elderly, the obese, excluxively breastfed infants, individuals getting limited sun exposure, and people who have fat malabsorption syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease. Without enough vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium and must take calcium from its stores in your skeleton. In children, vitamin D defiency can lead to rickets, which results in skeletal deformities. Lack of the vitamin D in adults can lead to osteomalacia, which causes muscular and bone weakness.

 

Populations at particular risk for vitamin D toxicity from an excess of the vitamin include those with histoplasmosis, hyperparathyroidism, kidney disease, sarcoidosis, or tuberculosis. However, anyone can develop vitamin D toxicity by regularly taking the vitamin in excess. Too much D leads to bone loss and hypercalcemia, which can have life-threatening complications. To treat the condition, a doctor will stop the patient's intake of vitamim D and calcium and monitor his or her progress.

 

 

It is believed that all individuals from 50 to 70 years old need 10 micrograms daily, and those who are over 70 need 15 to 20 micrograms a day. (One microgram equals 40 IUs.)

 

Pregnant and breastfeeding women should check with their physicians about vitamin D supplementation.