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Higher Levels of Vitamin D May Help Prevent Type1 Diabetes

How big and terrific the disease might be, nutrition can actually make it work simpler.

This is perhaps what the post you are going to dive in is going to prove.

It may sound ridiculous to you, but, I know you surely will end up being glad learning this piece of information.

A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, carried out by the researchers at Harvard School of Public Health, claims that vitamin D deficiency may increase the risk of developing type 1 diabetes.

Really?

What is Type 1 Diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, where the body’s immune cells attack and destroy the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. The lack of insulin results in the increases levels of glucose in the blood and urine. Whereas, type 2 is a condition were the body becomes resistant to the insulin in the body.

For the study, the researchers examined the blood samples of 1,000 members of the U.S. military whose blood has been collected from Department of Defense Serum Repository.

They compared the blood of 310 people who later developed type 1 diabetes with 613 controls who had never developed the disease

The observations were so that higher levels of vitamin d were linked to lowered risk of developing type 1 diabetes.

In terms of research results, greater than or equal to 100 nmol per liter vitamin D levels reduced the risk by 44 percent when taken for 5-4 years, over those participants whose blood contained less than 75 nmol/L vitamin D.

In some participants, even sufficient vitamin D levels were able to lower the risk by up to 60 percent.

More on vitamin d findings.

Vitamin D helps combat autoimmune diseases

The researchers earlier found a similar positive connection between vitamin D and multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease, which actually led the interest in them to analyze the possibility of such association with type 1 diabetes.

“Multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes are both autoimmune disorders, and the studies basically showed the same thing,” said researcher Bruce W. Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina. “

This is more of an environmental cause for adults.

A person may required to take 3-4000 units per day to get sufficient with the vitamin D levels in the blood to resist the diseases.

Require Higher levels than “Normal”

One needs higher than the normal levels of vitamin D to prevent type 1 diabetes.

According to the researches a 20 minute exposure to sun during mid afternoon can stimulate body to produce approximately 20,000 IU of vitamin D within next 24 hours. Researchers noted that taking supplements of 1,000 to 4,000 IU per day is safe and actually beneficial, since getting too much from sun might not sound that practical.

“It is surprising that a serious disease such as type 1 diabetes could perhaps be prevented by a simple and safe intervention,” lead author Kassandra Munger said, commenting on the study’s findings.

Isn’t that informative?

Let me know through your comments.

So, the take away could be to seek good amount of sunlight every day and if that finds quite difficult, then reach out for vitamin D3 supplements to play safe with such diseases.

Share this with someone you think could find help out of it.

Reference:

www.foodconsumer.org

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