Low Vitamin D can trigger Weight Gain
Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by Guy Edwards in Nutrition & Lifestyle
This time of year is a great time to venture abroad on a late summer holiday and I’m really looking forward to catching some rays and topping up my vitamin D this year. An interesting article appeared this year in the journal ‘Medical Hypotheses’ – my favourite medical reading – which puts forth the idea that vitamin D deficiency is one of the causes of common obesity.
It ascribes antecedence to the drop in vitamin D levels that starts with the cold ambient temperatures and food scarcity of the low-sun winter months. The need for increased metabolic activity to generate and store heat under these cold conditions could be a problem as it may deplete vital fat mass, which confers a survival advantage in such a climate by reducing surface area-to-volume ratio and by providing an energy store in the form of fat mass.
The team, based in Surrey, proposed that the body uses the natural decrease in vitamin D that occurs during winter as a signal for the accumulation of fat mass and therefore body size. Of course it makes practical sense that we get fatter in the winter and again it shows how our species that has evolved over millions of years still takes many of its cues to controlling metabolism from the environment. However, in the modern era where food is plentiful this could be contributing to the rising levels of obesity. As a guy who is known for helping clients to lose weight I think I am going to step outside right now and soak up a few rays.
In my practise I make sure that everyone I see has a 25OH Vitamin D blood test in October to assess vitamin D status moving into autumn/winter. From these results I can decide who needs vitamin D supplements and what the dose should be.
Naturopath Benjamin Brown gave a great short talk for Nutri, which is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVv2s0_YIlQ), indicating appropriate dosages and its well worth a watch. Vitamin D is toxic at high levels leading to hyper-calceamia in the blood, so it is important on high dosages to regularly test. I test about every 3 months. I use Iso D3 from Nutri which is cost-effective and gives a 3 month supply at a dosage of 2000IU per day.
Click here to buy Iso D3 online TODAY
Sources:
(Med Hypotheses. 2009 Mar;72(3):314-21. E pub 2008 Dec 2).
Sign Up Here To Claim Your FREE Fatloss eBook