Vitamin D Benefits

Vitamin D is also known as the "sunshine vitamin," there are many vitamin D benefits, and it can be absorbed through sunlight by your body.

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What Is It?!

Vitamin D is also known as the "sunshine vitamin," there are many vitamin D benefits, and it can be absorbed through sunlight by your body. Therefore, it is vital to keep your body healthy.

According to the National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements, the vitamin helps stimulate calcium absorption, making it essential for your bones to grow and remodel (this is where older bone tissue is taken away, and new bone tissue grows).

As a result, lacking it can lead to brittle, thin, or distorted bones. However, vitamin D has many other benefits, from physical to mental health.

The Following are 5 Vitamin D Benefits

Vitamin D Benefits: Strengthen Muscles 

Vitamin D can help build bones, but it can also help strengthen muscles. It can increase muscle strength; therefore, it can help prevent falls, a common issue that can lead to disability and sometimes death in the elderly.

Vitamin D Benefits: Good for Oral Health

As vitamin D allows us to absorb calcium better, it plays a critical role in maintaining oral health to lower the risk of gum disease and tooth decay.

The Journal of the Tennessee Dental Association review shows limited research. However, there is a "developing hypothesis" that vitamin D benefits oral health. It affects bone metabolism "for its capability to act as an anti-inflammatory agent and create the production of anti-microbial peptides."

Vitamin D Benefits: Prevent Diabetes 

While most studies aren't final, vitamin D might help prevent type 1 and type 2 diabetes. For example, one study from 2006 published in the journal Diabetes Care discovered that on its own didn't successfully lower the risk of an excess of sugar in the blood, but when combined daily intake of>800 IU of vitamin D and >1,200 mg of calcium would successfully decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Vitamin D Benefits: Lose Weight  

Low vitamin D levels are a known risk factor for obesity, which means more could aid in weight loss. For example, a 2009 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition discovered that obese or overweight women who had low calcium levels who were given a daily dose of calcium stacked with vitamin D could successfully lose pounds over those women who were given a placebo supplement, because of an "appetite-suppressing effect" of combining the two supplements.

Vitamin D Benefits: Battling Depression  

As the sun can effectively heighten your mood levels, so can a vitamin supplement.

According to an article in Neuropsychology from 2017, scientists discovered "a substantial relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression."

They recognized that more research must be done to define its precise mechanisms, like if low vitamin levels are the effect or cause of depression.