Vitamin D Therapy
It is now no longer unknown knowledge that vitamin D, as part of nutritional therapy, is not only important for bone metabolism, but also fulfills numerous functions in the immune system. Notably, our susceptibility to disease and our well-being depend on the quality of our immune system.
Good vitamin D levels are hard to impossible to achieve, especially in winter in northern and central Europe, and even in summer many of us do not see the sun as often as we think. Unprotected sun exposure is also not recommended due to the risk of skin cancer (and increased skin aging). However, even sunscreens with a sun protection factor of 10 and above already prevent the formation of vitamin D.
So what can you do to ensure you have good vitamin D levels? You can take it as a supplement. However, you often hear that taking vitamin D carelessly is dangerous. What does that mean?
A distinction must be made between the different forms of vitamin D.
A precursor (cholecalciferol), which we produce through our skin through exposure to sunlight or which we can take as a supplement, an anti-inflammatory form (calcidiol) and a pro-inflammatory form (calcitriol). Even though calcitriol is pro-inflammatory, we still need a small, specific amount of this form - only too much is pro-inflammatory. Since everyone's metabolism is different, it can happen that uncontrolled vitamin D supplementation leads to too much of the pro-inflammatory form (calcitriol) of vitamin D, thus doing more harm than good in the long term.
Here, therapeutic intervention can be made to reduce the conversion of the anti-inflammatory form (calcidiol) into the pro-inflammatory form (calcitriol), so that you can benefit as much as possible from vitamin D therapy.
Please feel free to book an appointment so that we can explore and optimize your vitamin D metabolism together.