Watch as preventive medicine specialist Dr. David Katz explains the health benefits of vitamin D.
Like all vitamins, Vitamin D is essential to health, we need it and decisions here results in ill health, it can adversely affect the immune system, lead to severe thinning of the bone, adversely affects the skin, increase the risk of cancer so we need it to prevent all of that.
It's most crucial for all we've known for a long time, is that regulates the absorption of calcium from food in the intestinal tract. In the absence of vitamin D we can absorb calcium. Not enough calcium, dangerous thing in your bones. That's the most immediate effect and the most immediate need but it exerts a wider ray of other important effects throughout the body and almost every organ system.
Our experts agree it’s best to get vitamins and other nutrients from your diet, not dietary supplements. But sometimes it makes sense to take a vitamin, especially if you're deficient in vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids and certain minerals.
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