Vitamin D and Athletic Performance

This is a partial reprint or an article by Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale who is my friend and mentor and also the author of many books including the Metabolic Diet.

Vitamin D is More Than Just for Strong Bones
Not too many years ago vitamin D wasn’t considered all that vital beyond helping calcium challenged people, especially women who were or had a tendency toward osteoporosis, and of course to prevent rickets, something rarely seen in industrialize countries since even minimal amounts of vitamin D prevents severe deficiency.

As such, when most people hear about vitamin D they think of sunshine and bones. That’s because it’s common knowledge that exposure to the sun results in the formation of vitamin D and that vitamin D is important, along with calcium, for strong bones.

While that aspect of vitamin D is important, there’s a lot more to the vitamin D story.

Vitamin D is really a group of fat soluble prohormones called secosteroids. Thus, unlike most other vitamins, vitamin D is really a steroid hormone that the body uses to manufacture calcitrol (1,25-Dihydroxycholecalciferol), which is the active form of vitamin D in our bodies.

The two major forms of the vitamin obtained from sun exposure, food, and supplements are vitamin D2 (or ergocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (or cholecalciferol). Cholecalciferol is the vitamin D produced in humans by exposure to the sun, and is felt to be more effective than ergocalciferol for enhancing calcitrol levels in our bodies.

Recent research however, show that vitamin D is crucial for many functions in the body, and is crucial for many internal cellular processes, insulin production, the immune system, depression, heart disease, pregnancy problems, birth defects, skin and other cancers, and other diseases, including inflammation in the body from various sources, including aging.

For example recent studies have found that low serum vitamin D levels were associated with all-cause mortality, cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality.

As a measure of just how important it is, it’s felt that possibly up to 2,000 different genes, which represents about one-sixth of the human genome, are affected by vitamin D.

Ok I am back!  Now that you have all “D” facts on vitamin D.  (a little NY humor on “D” facts)  You should send  Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale’s an email @ mauro@metabolicdiet.com  to get his newsletter.

Dr. Di Pasquale is one of my mentors and has had an incredible influence on my eating philosophy.  I am proud that he is a good friend and mentor and I will be posting some of his information here.  But you should subscribe to his email so you stay on the cutting edge just like I do!

Thanks for letting me post this Mauro!