Longevity
What Actually Happens During Vitamin D Deficiency?
Vitamin D deficiency is widespread and may accelerate aging. Learn how this essential nutrient protects your cellular health and longevity.
Longevity
Vitamin D deficiency is widespread and may accelerate aging. Learn how this essential nutrient protects your cellular health and longevity.
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"Winter is coming," a famous quote from Game of Thrones. Many of us know it well. "Winter is coming" is equally foreboding in the series. And many of us get a shiver down our spine when thinking of the dark season: "Oh no, how am I going to survive this again?"
One important reason is vitamin D deficiency. Alongside the lack of sunlight, it's perhaps the main reason why many of us drag ourselves through winter feeling tired, exhausted, lethargic, and somewhat depressed. In Switzerland, as in other northern regions, vitamin D deficiency is widespread—only a small portion of the population achieves adequate vitamin D levels in late autumn and winter. This means that in reality, perhaps most of us are not well supplied with vitamin D during the late-year months.
UVB radiation becomes insufficient for vitamin D production in the skin as early as October. The only good dietary source of vitamin D is fish—specifically wild salmon. But who eats 100–200 grams of wild salmon daily? Our ancestors perhaps, but nowadays that's hardly practical. That's why we remind you every year: Hello, from autumn through April or May, you must take vitamin D, ideally every day. If you don't do that... well, then you have only yourself to blame.
You can read lengthy explanations of what vitamin D deficiency does to the body in our blog (or in our book). However, a particularly elegant and recent perspective on the question "What does vitamin D deficiency do to the body?" is this:
Vitamin D Deficiency Accelerates Aging and Age-Related Disease
Wow! Now we're paying attention, aren't we? This would mean that many of us living in Switzerland and other northern regions have been accelerating our own aging for decades—for at least half the year, namely while vitamin D deficient.
This elegant summary was published in the highly respected Journal of Physiology—and not by just anyone, but by British biologist Sir Michael J. Berridge, who decades ago discovered one of the most important intracellular messengers (inositol trisphosphate) and was considered a pioneer in the field of cell communication. Sadly, he passed away recently at age 82.
In his work, you find these key points:
Autophagy is the cellular garbage disposal system. Without cellular cleanup, our cells age faster.
Vitamin D regulates the immune system. Some aspects are strengthened. Others, particularly in the area of autoimmunity and chronic inflammation, are suppressed by vitamin D.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is the malfunction of our cells' powerhouses. They literally produce our life energy. Vitamin D deficiency makes mitochondria sick.
SIRT1 is considered an important "longevity protein" in our cells. Everything that keeps us healthy works through this protein. Vitamin D appears to regulate it positively.
When our cells become sick and old, they produce more radicals—oxidative stress—which in turn damages cellular components. Vitamin D suppresses this by upregulating two important genes that produce cellular antioxidants.
Glutathione peroxidase is an important cellular antioxidant. Vitamin D increases its production.
Vitamin D apparently halts the cognitive decline observed in aging. What more could you ask for?
So vitamin D is closely connected to the function of our mitochondria. When the body doesn't get enough vitamin D, it will want to release stored fat. It naturally increases fat mobilization—mainly by releasing more stress hormones. At the same time, however, our mitochondria don't function properly during vitamin D deficiency. The result is that we feel very exhausted. And that's exactly how many people get through winter.
The question keeps coming up (why, actually??): how much vitamin D should you take? Most of us achieve good levels at 1,000–5,000 IU per day. More on this topic in this article.
