Are stress and high cortisol depleting your vitamin D?

by PF Louis 

(NaturalNews) According to recent studies reported by the Body Ecology website, cortisol, the flight or fight hormone, can disrupt your body's vitamin D3 uptake.

If cortisol is produced by chronic stress that can't be acted upon by running or fighting for your life, the cortisol builds up in your body. This is the situation with many of us who try to suppress chronic low level stress and carry on with what many consider "normal" life.

Here's another factor according to the report: Normally, cortisol production decreases from midnight to 4 a.m. Staying up past midnight creates an irregular cortisol production pattern that may result in increased cortisol in your body as it tries to compensate. That's not good news for us night owls.

How does this happen? Vitamin D is a steroid hormone, and so is cortisol. Hormones need receptors in the body to perform their magic. The receptors for vitamin D3 are called simply vitamin D receptors (VDR).

So regardless of how much Vitamin D3 we take in, if it can't find receptors, it just floats around in the blood with deceptively high D3 blood level counts. Cortisol is also a hormone. It is a prominent member of the glucocorticoid class of hormones, which diminish VDR capabilities.

Therefore, in addition to maintaining or increasing vitamin D3 intake, try to sleep regular hours and learn to stress less. 

Here's a vitamin D3 review to remind you of the benefits.

Sources, recommended amounts, and benefits of vitamin D3

You won't get sufficient D3, technically a hormone precursor - not a vitamin, from foods. Sunlight and supplements are the keys. The sun's UBV rays on exposed skin mixes with cholesterol, yes cholesterol, in your skin to start a series of metabolic biochemical changes that culminate in your liver and kidneys to produce D3 for those VDR receptors.

When you take natural animal or plant based supplements, you bypass the sunlight exposure phase that creates the vitamin D3 precursor. Instead, you get naturally derived precursors that go directly into the liver and kidneys for processing.

Your liver and kidneys take over to produce the hormonal activities and functions needed for a variety of situations. Do not use a prescription drug vitamin D or buy it off a shelf unless you are absolutely certain it's a naturally based D3, not D2.

The best way to determine your vitamin D3 blood level is from a blood analysis known as the 25-hydroxyvitamin D or 25(OH)D test. If you don't have access to a local lab or a trustworthy doctor, there is an organization that can work out home testing with you here.

Almost everyone is deficient with this hormone/vitamin. The negative effects are often sub-clinical. One factor is the low RDA (recommended daily amount) of supplements well under 1,000 IU (international units).

Another factor: The "medically acceptable" range of D3 blood levels, 20 to 30 nanograms per milliliters (ng/ml) of blood serum doesn't cut it, according to the Vitamin D Council, Dr. Mercola and others.

They say optimum health protection occurs with a blood level of 50 to 70 ng/ml. Under 50 ng/ml is considered deficient. For treating cancer, they recommend 70 to 100 ng/ml.

Over 100 ng/ml can be toxic. However, tests have determined that supplementing up to 40,000 IU of D3 is safe for short periods of time. 

The health benefits of D3 are numerous, from preventing or reversing Alzheimer's (with curcumin), cancer, and minor flus and colds. It is an anti-inflammatory compound and immune system regulatorthat increases or decreases the immune system as needed.