Vitamin D is an essential nutrient, there are a number of questions around how much of this vitamin is needed, and how does it exactly help our bodies?
Find out from Dr Fatme Al Anouti, Associate Professor, College of Natural and Health Sciences, Zayed University
Since the start of the pandemic it has been widely reported that vitamin d can help guard against severe covid19 while vitamin d is an essential nutrient there are a number of questions around how much of this vitamin d is needed and how does it exactly help our bodies
Joining us now is dr fagni alanuri an associate professor college of natural health and sciences from zayed university hello dr fatni and welcome to omnia health insights hello good morning thank you so much genevieve and i would like to also thank uh rejoin for both of you like arranging this interview
And special thanks also to the omnia health insights for you know taking a good effort to educate the public thank you it’s a pleasure doctor so my first question is could you tell us how much vitamin d helps co combat covet 19. sure um i think this is a very important question
Especially nowadays genevieve like everybody is hearing about the importance of vitamin d in terms of like prevention or like hypothetically prevention let’s say uh covert 19 infection and um if we want to talk about this role uh i want to first like highlight uh maybe the the severity of the covet
19 infection and why is it problematic and usually how it’s associated with mortality so if we look at the covert 19 infection which is caused by the sars cov2 virus the the the actual harm or the actual mortality is triggered by different things one of them is that it
Triggers what we call a cytokine storm in the body so the immune system you know becomes in such a mess and it exaggerates the response against the the virus so one of the roles of the vitamin d is to actually balance this exaggeration so it keeps it in check it keeps our
Immune system in check so that there’s a balance between the pro-inflammatory and the anti-inflammatory what we call cytokines in the body so one of the first functions of vitamin d and it’s a very well established function actually is that it is an anti-inflammatory substance so by itself you know it’s helping the um
People who have coveted 19 to to you know overcome the the infection itself now the second point is uh due to its fact uh this fact being an anticoagulant uh so as we know that also one of the complications that uh covert 19 patients get affected with is
What we call thrombosis or like formation of clots and this leads later to aneurysm or might lead to atherosclerosis and you know later on some severe complications and main death even and so um vitamin d has a very well established role actually as the anticoagulant so what does it actually erodes this clot
It dissolves that it degrades it and so this is also very important um a third function also um owes to its fact being an immunomodulated molecule so it you know modulates the immune system and it helps the immune system how it helps it it um first of all like you know it
Supports the proliferation of certain cells which are in the uh body which are called the white blood cells because they are involved immune system and also um helps them produce some very beneficial substances that act as like antiviral antibacterial antifungal as well so so this is why it’s like directly
Involved in the immune system it really helps our immune system it boosts our immune system and maintaining a good level of vitamin d is also very good for immunity thank you for that information dr patmi so what are the signs and symptoms of vitamin d deficiency this is actually a very important
Question and it’s at the same time it’s interesting because um the signs of vitamin d deficiency and the symptoms could be really very vague and in fact vitamin deficiency um could be silent like you know people could go with vitamin d deficiency for a long time before really recognizing that they
Have the vitamin d deficiency and so sometimes it’s not only uh under diagnosed or like it’s sometimes even misdiagnosed because some of the symptoms are common with like other symptoms like that could be really non-specific maybe like related to stress for example and in fact vitamin d deficiency
Can affect you know individuals across all ages so it can affect infants children and then you know adults elderly as well in the infants and the children it’s a little bit easier because it is uh mark what we call the crippling disease or like these
Bold legs so you can see the feature and then you know the physician can suspect that there is vitamin d deficiency and they ask for a blood test and so on but in adults it’s usually a little bit tricky because as i said like you know it’s associated with like these non-specific
Symptoms so usually something like dizziness fatigue muscle ache you know bone ache um hair loss you know all these things like malaise like fatigue you know all these things that people never think that it’s related to vitamin d deficiency it could be related to like you know i’m going through like a
Stressful situation or i could be having some deficiency with like some kind of a mineral or like another vitamin but not like vitamin d um so it could be really very tricky and that’s why you know i i highly recommend that people check their blood level
Their vitamin d level once per year at least just the way they check their cholesterol level and you know check for glucose and all these good markers ah i see that’s great does the lack of vitamin d impact mental health absolutely so um you know the very well established
Role that a lot of people know about if they hear vitamin d they immediately think about bone um skeletal integrity and you know because of its role in um helping the absorption of calcium and this is really a very important role however like you know um probably in the last two decades
We have had a lot of research very uh comprehensive research that documented that vitamin d is important not only for skeletal health but it’s important for all you know the body in general because it’s associated with protective role in cardiovascular diseases diabetes you know so it’s good for the immune
System as we talked you know previously about the covet 19 um so it has you know it’s more into it it’s not only like a vitamin it’s really like also a hormone uh it’s also a neural hormone so it’s very important for you know uh the the neuronal development
And this is why a lot of studies have documented also that people who have vitamin d deficiency uh they could be at risk of being depressed or the other way around sometimes like you know people who are depressed um they have also like high risk of becoming vitamin d deficient so we’re
Not really sure which one would trigger which but we know that they are closely related and also um there’s a lot of evidence that shows that vitamin d is involved in the dopamine serotonin pathway so it triggers all these you know neurotransmitters and all these compounds that are important for the development
Of the brain and also is important for neuronal development as we said ah that’s very important it’s good to be aware of that so how kinds of vitamin ds are out there and what is the best form to consume it um so there are actually two different forms that we call
D2 and d3 so one is like plant based and one is animal based so one is called call calciferol and one is called ergocalciferol and one is more important than the other so d3 is almost like around two times more potent than d2 um so i mean like they can be
You can take either d2 or d3 but if you have to bear in mind that if you’re gonna take d2 you need twice as much you know to reach to the d3 level uh so d2 was very prevalent form you know for pharmaceutical companies like they like to
Use d2 just to avoid toxicity and all of that but nowadays like you know it’s mostly d3 because it’s more potent as i mentioned
