At this point, there's a lot of evidence supporting vitamin d's importance in the body. It has been shown to increase athletic performance and recently has been shown to help children against the flu and asthma. Thus, optimizing vitamin d levels seems like the smart thing to do.
Yesterday I read an interesting post which discussed how a paleo diet allows people to absorb and retain vitamin d better than people following a standard diet with grains.
"Since vitamin D appears in bile and cereal fibers may bind bile, Batchelor and Compston suggested that this may explain the loss of vitamin D in the cereal-fiber-supplemented individuals."
This doesn't come as much of a surprise to me, but the ramifications of this analysis are important. If the foods we eat directly affect our vitamin d levels, then the foods we eat affect our athletic performance, our immune defenses, and probably a whole host of other things. Ditching grains probably won't make you LeBron, but it could improve your game.
On the other side of the coin, the author mentions that paleo dieters require less supplementation and put themselves at risk of having levels of vitamin d that are too high. Like everything else, too much vitamin d can be an issue and I think I should get my levels checked out soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment