Nutrition
What Are the Symptoms and Causes of Vitamin D Deficiency?
What is vitamin D deficiency?
Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency include muscle aches and weakness, bone pain, muscle spasms, painful walking, and bone fractures. Causes of vitamin D deficiency include not enough sunlight, not enough in your diet, kidney or liver disease, malabsorption disorder, and medications.
Vitamin D deficiency is common around the world. Though Vitamin D is called a vitamin, it is actually a prohormone. A prohormone is something that your body converts into a hormone.
You use vitamin D in your body to help absorb calcium. It’s linked to many other health conditions.
Vitamin D deficiency occurs when your body doesn’t have or make enough vitamin D.
Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium and keep a balanced amount of it in the blood. This helps your body strengthen your bones. Vitamin D also has many other functions.
The body makes vitamin D from sunlight. When sunshine hits your skin, a chemical reaction occurs. Your liver and kidneys convert vitamin D to an active form that your body can use.
Sometimes you may not have enough and this is called vitamin D deficiency.