Vitamin D

Australia has seen a surge in vitamin D testing of children, with similar trends reported for adults around the world. GPs are now being urged not to test for vitamin D unnecessarily. So when is low vitamin D a potential concern? And when might you need to get your levels tested?

How much vitamin D do we need?

• Vitamin D also has many other roles, including helping our immune defences and contributing to DNA repair and cell differentiation.
• We can thank the sun for most of our vitamin D. A chemical in our skin called 7-dehydrocholesterol is converted to vitamin D after contact with UVB radiation from the sun.
• While we get some vitamin D also through our diet, this makes a relatively small contribution.
• It’s difficult to get much more than one-third of our daily vitamin D requirement from diet without supplementation.

Why avoid vitamin D deficiency?

• Prolonged, severe vitamin D deficiency will lead to softening of bone tissue and cause diseases such as rickets (children) and osteomalacia (adults).
• However, avoiding low concentrations is likely to be good for many aspects of health, with consistent evidence suggesting benefits for infectious diseases and autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis.

Who is at risk of deficiency?

• The two main reasons for vitamin D deficiency typically relate to: 1. not getting (enough) vitamin D through sun exposure.
• Deficiency risk can be high for anyone who is housebound, such as older or disabled people in residential care.
• The risk of deficiency increases if we always cover our skin carefully by modest cultural dress, and also dark skin pigmentation is known to reduce vitamin D synthesis.

Am I getting enough sun exposure?

• In Australia, it is possible to get enough vitamin D from the sun throughout the year.
• Read more:
  Why you need more Vitamin D in the winter

  During winter, catching enough sun can be difficult, especially if you spend your days confined indoors.

• This is because sunlight exposure can only help produce vitamin D if the UVB rays reach us at the correct angle.

Why does excess vitamin D testing matter?

• Excessive testing is also a waste of health-care resources, with one single test costing about the same as a years’ worth of vitamin D supplementation.
• Very often, we can make relatively small changes to our lifestyles to reduce the risks of vitamin D deficiency.

• There has been an explosion in nutritional supplements that promise a
  superior product because they contain nanoparticles called liposomes.
• But there’s a lot of misleading information and outright myths about these being shared online, so it’s important to understand how liposomes work before you spend money on an expensive new food supplement.
• Liposomes can fuse together to form a similar structure to human cell membranes while retaining a liquid core.

Pharmaceutical vs food supplement liposomes

• This means food supplement companies are having to work harder to convince people their products can overcome this problem.
• It may seem logical that if liposomes work well for medicines, they could help your body absorb vitamins and other supplements too.
• In the food supplement industry, there are a multitude of products on the market that are of poor quality or downright fake.
• In contrast, the liposomes used in food supplements are often the most basic, delicate type.

Do liposomes enhance oral absorption?

• There are conflicting reports about whether liposomes enhance gastrointestinal absorption.
• Food supplement liposomes may enhance absorption by improving the ability of the nutrients they contain to fuse with other substances in your food.
• The same goes for claims that conventional liposomes are absorbed into your bloodstream and remain intact.

Can liposomes be used with any type of nutrient?

• Even in pharmaceutical research, where more advanced techniques are used, some drug molecules are difficult to fit inside liposomes.
• Furthermore, liposomes are not an impervious plastic bag, but more akin to a cotton bag through which water can pass.
• This means if you take a dose, only 10% of it will consist of the drug molecules encapsulated in liposomes.
• While it might be possible to see larger liposomes using a quality light microscope, the smaller and more effective liposomes are measured in nanometres.

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