Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin which is created by sun exposure. Its deficiency symptoms are depression, chronic fatigue, weight loss, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and osteoporosis.
Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency
Vitamin D is known as sunshine vitamin because it is created in the body when it is exposed to sunlight. If you are a vegetarian you should know that that type of diet can be low on vitamin D because it is commonly found in foods such as egg yolk, fish, fish oil, some cheese, beef liver and some types of grain.
Vitamin D is of utmost importance for your body because its role is to help your body use the calcium and phosphorus from your food. It also regulates normal cellular differentiation thus preventing cancer and helps insulin secretion. Deficiency of this vitamin is connected to rickets.
This is a disease which affects your bones in way they don’t form properly because the calcium cannot be incorporated into them. So your bones lack minerals and that makes them fragile. This can cause serious skeletal deformities.
Causes of vitamin D deficiency can be different. Here are some of them:
You don’t consume recommended doses of this vitamin. In that case, change your diet. Start consuming foods that are rich in vitamin D. We have already mentioned the foods rich in vitamin D.
Limited exposure to sunlight can also be the cause. This is very easy to treat. Just go out more.
Your kidneys cannot change vitamin D into its active form. This comes with age. The older you get, the harder it becomes for your kidneys to do this process.
You are overweight. Vitamin D is absorbed by fat cells which can lead to low levels of vitamin D in your body. Lose weight because if you don’t your bones will become more fragile.
If you have dark skin, you should be aware that melanin in your skin reduces skin’s ability to produce vitamin D. Take a vitamin D supplement.
Here you will find some useful info on Vitamin K benefits. Vitamin K has a key role in converting glutamate to gamma-carboxyglutamate (also known as gla). The name ‘vitamin K’ came from the German and Scandinavian word “Koagulation”, since this vitamin is also known as “Koagulation vitamin” in those languages. Later on the name was accepted world wide.
One of the most important roles of vitamin K is to modify proteins needed for blood coagulation processes. It is also needed in processes involving other proteins needed for metabolism of certain tissues and bones.
The place of vitamin K production is the large intestine. The feature that makes this vitamin different from most of other vitamins is that it’s produced by bacteria. So deficiency of this vitamin in a human body is very rare. It could happen if one consumes large amounts of antibiotics during a long period of time. Again – vitamin K deficiency is not common for one more reason: it is recycled all the time in body cells.
Vitamin K has its synthetic forms. Those are vitamins K3, K4 and K5. K3 found its use in pet foods and vitamin K5 is used in fungal growth.
Sources of this vitamin are green vegetables (cabbage, spinach, and broccoli) and fruits like kiwi and avocado. There are also certain oils that contain this vitamin, but not in such large amounts, so one would have to consume (too) much oil in his diet to obtain daily dose. As we all know, too much oil is bad for your health, so try to get your daily dose of vitamin K from other sources that are healthy.
Here we will discuss vitamin A deficiency symptoms. Vitamin A participates in many important processes which take place in human body, so if it comes to vitamin A deficiency it will result in problems, sometimes very serious conditions. In children this can lead to problems with growth and bone quality as well as respiratory disorders. This description of symptoms will help you recognize whether you lack vitamin A.
You may lack vitamin A if you are having problems to see in dim light (or at night) or if having problems to adapt your vision to darkness. We already know that one of the roles vitamin A has in human organism is to maintain the vision. Other symptoms are also related to eyes conditions: dry eyes and tiny light colored (nearly white) spots in the eyelids. If one doesn’t react in time, severe complications regarding vision can occur – as severe as blindness, so do not ignore these symptoms. Further on, if you are experiencing trouble in sensing tastes, this is one more indicator that you may lack vitamin A.
Deficiency of vitamin A also reflects through your skin condition. If your skin is dry or your wounds won’t heal, vitamin A deficiency is to blame. If your hair and nails are dry and weak, your body is obviously telling you that you need more of vitamin A.
The main cause to vitamin A deficiency is a bad diet. If having any doubts, blood test will show if there is something to treat. But even if you are fine and with no similar symptoms, you should keep in mind the importance of well balanced diet and should be informed about foods with vitamin A. That way you can prevent your body to suffer from vitamin A deficiency by using simple and natural means such are foods. Also, these problems are common in old people.