Vitamin D Deficiency

Welcome to my web site. My name is David Vai and I recently found out I was severely vitamin D deficient. I decided to create this website to pass on the information I have learned through extensive studying and research. Growing up as a child, we were always taught to stay out of the sun or else we increased our risk of skin cancer in the future. At school they made us wear wide brim hats, long sleeves and apply sunscreen if we were going to be outdoors playing sports. This has stuck with me my whole life, reinforced by government campaigns until recently I decided to have a checkup with my doctor. The downside to all this protection, and I'm sure they didn't know about it at the time, was that without the sun our body can't produce enough vitamin D to keep us healthy. I requested a blood test and specifically asked for my vitamin D levels to be analyzed.

My doctor at the time didn't seem to think it was necessary or that I would be deficient giving the sunny locale we live in. Nevertheless he obliged, and a week later I heard the results that I was severely deficient. My level was 20 nmol\L when it should have been between 100-160 nmol\L! It's likely that my body had been running on an insufficient amount of vitamin D my entire life. Luckily I haven't suffered any obvious disease resulting from this, but the long term risks are much more troublesome. Having low vitamin D is linked to increased risk of cancer, autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, heart disease, early aging, osteomalacia which is literally softening of our bones (presents as rickits in children), depression and who knows what else is to come from further studies.

The culture of sun protection

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad that sun protection was made a part of our daily lives and I didn't ruin my skin as a child. I'm also very glad to now know how important the sun is to our bodies. There have been massive advertising campaigns warning against the sun exposure. Making sure we always wear a hat, sunglasses, long sleeves and sunscreen. It would have been very easy to go through life being completely oblivious to that fact. After my blood test results, I began supplementing with 3x 1000 IU tablets per day and 6 months later my level is now at 65 nmol\L, much better than the 20 nmol\L it was before. That is still insufficient but not as severely as it was previously. I haven't made an attempt at increasing my sun exposure, so the majority of that increase is from the supplements. The UV rays are particularly strong here, and skin cancer is a massive problem, so I decided not to increase my risk of that and to take supplements instead.

Hopefully the information on this site is useful to you, I spent a lot of time researching and organising it and tried to avoid technical terms that would make no sense to most of us. I also keep my eye out for new studies related to vitamin D so I can keep you all informed directly from the medical publications. Without getting too philosophical, it is quite amazing that our body requires star light that has travelled cosmic distances for it to start producing this substance vitamin D, also known as cholecalciferol, within our skin.