Vitamin D, Women and Me

Vitamin D (there are 5 variants D1 to D5, but am talking in general) is something different from other Vitamins. Well, all vitamins are different from one another and that is why it is named differently..but still

From my childhood, I have seen Calcium Sandoz tablet (or its bottle). My parents never bought that for us. It wasn’t any prescription item, and there were lots of ads given by the manufacturer too.( After me became grown up, I bought a bottle and tried it. Did it help? No idea. May be or may not be). Anyway during my childhood days, milk was rationed in my home and hence I never got more than a glass of milk.

Calcium tablets used to come as calcium (carbonate) alone. Even now it comes that way also. But these days calcium plus Vitamin D combination is picking up (in my country, not talking about other countries where there is more Vitamin deficiency and hence Vit D fortified products were popular since very long time). Health drinks are also getting fortified with Vitamin D. Why?

Why coz, it helps the absorption of Calcium in our body. Calcium is mainly prescribed for women (there is ‘calcium for women’ but I am yet to see a calcium for men) and there are 'womenly' reasons. When my wife developed some knee pain, one doc even prescribed this for her. (As a tester of this family, I too took a couple of tablets !!, yes the calcium plus Vitamin D combination).

One specialty of Vitamin D is that it functions as a hormone (chemical messenger which carries signal from one cell/organ to another) too. And another specialty is that , every human skin is capable of producing it with the help of sunlight (Ultra Violet B, to be specific). Then why we need to supplement it? Its coz, we usually don’t get enough Vitamin D through food (need to eat lots of fish or mushrooms or eggs, which usually doesn’t happen). Vitamin D production in our skin depends on the color of the skin, the geographical area where we live etc and yes, in the modern era, it has a lot to do with sun block creams and lotions used by us. If one has the habit of using sun block lotion round the year, he/she will be in trouble with deficiency of Vitamin D.

What will happen if there is not enough vitamin D in our body but still we take enough calcium supplement or drink lots of milk? Unfortunately, our body will not be able to absorb it, it won’t get recognized ….it is vitamin D that signals our stomach/intestine to absorb calcium, so if there is no signal what will our body do? And body needs calcium too….so? So, body tries to breakdown our bone itself to meet the requirement. And that is a big problem, since this process weakens our bone. (See, how it is connected to osteoporosis or easy fracture…)

And that is one of the reasons it is said walking during early morning and evening (well, without a sun block lotion) is good for our health. We don’t have to bear the heat but we can produce a little Vitamin D too.