Vitamin D is essential to having healthy bones and helps prevent diseases and illness. The team of highly skilled medical professionals at Evia Medical Center in Smithtown, New York, provide you with an integrative approach to medicine, which includes monitoring your vitamin levels. They offer nutritional evaluations to check your vitamin D and other important vitamin levels and devise a treatment plan to optimize your health. Contact the office to schedule an appointment today.
Vitamins play a significant role in keeping your body healthy. Vitamin D, also known as “the sunshine vitamin,” keeps your bones healthy while also helping prevent the development of diseases and illnesses.
While your body can produce vitamin D, it can’t produce it on its own. Instead, your body produces vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D can also be found in certain foods like fish, fish oil, and egg yolks.
If you don’t have enough exposure to sunlight or don’t eat enough foods with vitamin D, you may develop a vitamin D deficiency which causes a variety of health issues.
You are at increased risk of developing a vitamin D deficiency if you:
Some symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are mild and may go away as your diet changes or as your exposure to sunlight increases. For example, some people may experience a vitamin D deficiency during winter months when days are shorter, only to have levels improve during the summer when the sun is out more.
Symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency include:
Your practitioner at Evia Medical Center diagnoses vitamin D deficiencies through a blood test that checks your vitamin D levels. You’ll also have a nutrition evaluation to help identify any other vitamin deficiencies you may have. For most people, a level of 12 nanograms/millimeter indicates a vitamin D deficiency.
Since a vitamin D deficiency means you don’t have enough vitamin D, the best way to treat it is to increase your vitamin D intake.
Treatment options include:
Vitamin D promotes healthy bones and prevents illnesses. Make an appointment today at Evia Medical Center for a nutrition evaluation to check your vitamin D levels and maintain your health.