Vitamin D has been found to prevent thousands of negative health conditions, and even aid the body in fighting pre-existing ones. The latest finding is that improper vitamin D levels may lead to early menstruation in young girls, which is a risk factor for countless health problems that may affect them later in life.

ScienceDaily reports:

Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health measured the blood vitamin D levels in 242 girls ages 5-12 from Bogota, Colombia, and followed them for 30 months. Girls low on vitamin D were twice as likely to start menstruation during the study than those with sufficient vitamin D, said epidemiologist Eduardo Villamor, associate professor in the U-M SPH.

This is important for several reasons, Villamor said. Worldwide, there has been a slow decline in the age of the first menstruation, or menarche, for years, which Villamor says suggests an environmental cause, since the genetics that trigger puberty haven’t changed.

“We know relatively little about what triggers puberty from an environmental perspective,” Villamor said. “If we learn what is causing the decline in age of first menstruation, we may be able to develop interventions” to prevent premature menarche.

Early menstruation is a risk factor for behavioral and psychosocial problems in teens. Also, girls who have an earlier menarche appear to have increased risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases and cancer — particularly breast cancer, as adults.

Over the past few years, researchers have come up with a mountain of evidence that vitamin D is extremely important to maintaining health and preventing and even treating a host of health problems. For example, studies have shown that too little vitamin D may trigger breast cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, brittle bones, heart attacks and more.

And now there’s breaking news that scientists have discovered two more extraordinary benefits to getting enough vitamin D through sun exposure and supplements. It turns out a lack of the remarkable vitamin could result in sports-related muscle injuries. What’s more, vitamin D may, in a sense, help “vacuum” out plaques in the brain associated with the dreaded, mind-robbing dementia known as Alzheimer’s disease.

A recent study just presented at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine’s (AOSSM) Annual Meeting now underway in San Diego has linked too little vitamin D in the body to an increased risk of muscle injuries in athletes. Specifically, the scientists studied National Football League (NFL) football players.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/033042_vitamin_D_Alzheimers_disease.html#ixzz1iAwBG4HN

Vitamin D has finally become accepted by the mainstream medical community to be a powerful nutrient that is necessary for proper health function. Vitamin D has been found to slash the risk of multiple cancer types (including skin cancer), aid in fat loss, and even prevent diabetes. Why then, is the population so horribly deficient in vitamin D that we are seeing a resurgence of the rickets? Here are 3 reasons why even informed individuals may be severely deficient in vitamin D this summer:

Reason #1: You wash the exposed areas with soap within 48 hours after exposure

It takes the body up to 48 hours to fully absorb the majority of vitamin D from the surface of your skin into your bloodstream. Washing your entire body with soap can reduce absorption rates, and lead to a lack of vitamin D within the body. The key here is to not wash the entire body with soap, but only vital areas such as under the arms and groin. The rest of the body can be cleaned with water which will not affect vitamin D asbortion.

Reason #2: You’re lathering on the sunscreen

Vitamin D production is extremely limited when sunscreen is used to protect the body from natural sunlight. One report found that prolonged use of sunscreen can lead to vitamin D deficiency, due to a lack of production and absorption. In addition, those who did not use sunscreen and frequently tanned had higher bone density.

Reason #3: Vitamin D cannot penetrate glass

For those who enjoy sunbathing in a glass patio, or soak up the sun through a closed glass window, it may be time to head outdoors. Vitamin D cannot pass through glass, contrary to popular belief.

Other facts about vitamin D:

• Vitamin D is produced by your skin in response to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight.

• Sunscreens block your body’s ability to create vitamin D. Even the lower SPF sunscreens, such as SPF 8, hamper your body’s ability to generate vitamin D by 95%.

• It would require ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk to reach the minimum daily levels of vitamin D into your system.

• Vitamin D3 can be purchased in supplement form, and is vastly superior to vitamin D2, which your body has trouble breaking down and absorbing.

• Most of us are deficient in vitamin D.

• Many reputable health experts recommend taking around 5,000 IU vitamin D per day, but this amount varies. The only accurate way to gauge how much you should be taking is to get a blood test.

About two years ago, I was at a conference and one of the presenters brought up her idea that a significant cause of nearsightedness is the fact that so many of us spend most of the time indoors staring at computer screens, or in confined enough urban spaces that we don’t keep our eyes practiced at looking far into the distance. Turns out, she wasn’t too far off, though getting out in the open more is less about using our eyes for watching the distance and more about getting some sunlight. New research shows that if we want to prevent nearsightedness, we need to get outside into the sun.

Vitamin D deficiency is quite common, and a growing list of diseases and conditions are being linked with it. Regular sun exposure, without sunscreen, causes your skin to produce vitamin D naturally. But how much sun do you need?

You’ve probably seen some vague guidelines, recommending “a few minutes every day.” But these recommendations are far too general to be useful. The amount of sun you need to meet your vitamin D requirements varies hugely, depending on your location, your skin type, the time of year, the time of day, and even the atmospheric conditions.

The Vitamin D/UV Calculator

Scientists at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research have devised a calculator that will take all those factors into consideration and estimate how many minutes of exposure you need for your skin to produce 25 mcg (the equivalent of 1,000 International Units) of vitamin D.

It’s not the most user-friendly interface and it is very easy to enter the wrong information. But once you get past the technicalities, it’s very interesting to see how much the answers change when you vary the input.

It is also not written for US cities so you can go to this page to find out latitude and longitude of many cites and enter the numbers manually. The easiest way may be to simply google “altitude of [your town]“. Remember to convert it to kilometers. One kilometer is about 3300 feet.

If your latitude is 39 S, enter -39. If your longitude is 76 W, enter -76.

You’ll also need to enter the time of day you are going out in the sun, expressed as UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). Here is a converter that will convert local time into UTC. The calculator uses a 24 hour clock, so hours from 1 PM to midnight are expressed as 13 to 24.

The calculator also wants to know the thickness of the ozone layer. I suggest just setting this one to medium. Be sure to click the radio button next to the entries. They are often not automatically selected when you fill in the values.

Keep in mind that the exposure times given are considered enough to maintain healthy vitamin D status. If you are starting out with a vitamin D deficiency, you might need more.