Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency may include: Fatigue. Not sleeping well. Bone pain or achiness. Depression or feelings of sadness.
When vitamin D levels are low and the body isn't able to properly absorb calcium and phosphorus, there is an increased risk of bone pain, bone fractures, muscle pain and muscle weakness. In older adults, severe vitamin D deficiency (levels less than 10 ng/mL) may also contribute to an increased risk of falls.
Vitamin D is vital for physical and mental health. A vitamin D deficiency can impact your mood, meaning it may contribute to feeling down or depressed. Research suggests there's a relationship between vitamin D and depression, but there isn't enough evidence to support saying low vitamin D levels cause depression.
Deficiency of vitamin D might be associated with diseases of immune dysregulation, one manifestation of which could be excessive daytime sleepiness (Zitterman and Gummert 2010; Hoeck and Pall 2011).
Having inadequate levels of vitamin D may correlate with unintentional weight gain. A study on women over the age of 65 found that participants with a lower vitamin D level experienced more weight gain. A systematic review of 23 different studies found similar associations between vitamin D deficiency and obesity.
How Long Does It Take To Recover From Vitamin D Deficiency? It can take a few weeks for your vitamin D levels to rise once you start taking supplements. Expect a 4-6 week recovery time if you don't have any underlying health issues that could slow down the recovery phase.
There's no set time of day that's best to take vitamin D supplements. Some people say taking vitamin D supplements at night is an insomnia risk. There's no research to confirm this, but you might want to take your supplement earlier in the day if you think it's screwing with your sleep.
Use the CVS Health At Home Vitamin D Test Kit to get accurate and comprehensive results in the privacy and comfort of your own home. Simply collect your blood sample using this convenient kit, mail it to the lab, and receive your results through a secure online portal in just a few days.
Vitamin D deficiency is most commonly caused by a lack of exposure to sunlight. Some disorders can also cause the deficiency. The most common cause is lack of exposure to sunlight, usually when the diet is deficient in vitamin D, but certain disorders can also cause the deficiency.
Vitamin D and Anxiety. It seems that more scientists agree about the link between vitamin D deficiency and anxiety than depression. Though, some members of the scientific community are skeptical about how much it helps with anxiety. Regardless, multiple studies find that a vitamin D deficiency may increase anxiety.
Not getting enough vitamin D may raise your risk for other diseases and conditions — some of them life-threatening.
However, taking too much vitamin D in the form of supplements can be harmful. Children age 9 years and older, adults, and pregnant and breastfeeding women who take more than 4,000 IU a day of vitamin D might experience: Nausea and vomiting. Poor appetite and weight loss.
Therefore, conditions that affect the gut and digestion, like celiac disease, chronic pancreatitis, Crohn's disease, and cystic fibrosis, can reduce vitamin D absorption.
"Adequate levels of magnesium in the body are essential for the absorption and metabolism not only of vitamin D but of calcium as well," Dean states. "Magnesium converts vitamin D into its active form so that it can help calcium absorption.
The best food sources of vitamin D are oily fish, including salmon, mackerel, and sardines. Other sources include egg yolks, red meat, and liver. Vitamin D is added to some foods too, including breakfast cereals, plant milks and fat spreads. Check information on-pack to see if this applies to the products you buy.
Some side effects of taking too much vitamin D include weakness, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, and others. Taking vitamin D for long periods of time in doses higher than 4000 IU (100 mcg) daily is possibly unsafe and may cause very high levels of calcium in the blood.
A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials that compared the effects of vitamin D2 and D3 supplements on blood levels found that D3 supplements tended to raise blood concentrations of the vitamin more and sustained those levels longer than D2. [76,77] Some experts cite vitamin D3 as the preferred form as it is ...
It can take anywhere from 1-6 months to raise vitamin D levels with supplements. How much your levels increase and how long it takes will depend on the dose and your baseline vitamin D levels.
Besides boosting mood and promoting calcium absorption, recent studies have shown that vitamin D may also aid in weight loss. For people with extra belly fat, a vitamin D supplement may be beneficial.
In general, the two main causes of vitamin D deficiency are: Not getting enough vitamin D in your diet and/or through sunlight. Your body isn't properly absorbing or using vitamin D.
Vitamin D stimulates hair follicles to grow, and so when the body does not have enough, the hair may be affected. A vitamin D deficiency may also be linked to alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition that causes patchy hair loss.
Growing evidence has demonstrated that vitamin D has a role in sleep regulation [12]. Specifically, vitamin D deficiency (VDD) can increase risk of sleep disorders and is associated with sleep difficulties, shorter sleep duration, and nocturnal awakenings in children and adults [13,14,15].