The link between Vitamin D and insomnia

From click2houston.com/news

HOUSTON - Sleepless nights happen to all of us, but if you toss and turn every night, it can be a sign of a bigger health issue.
Your body may be Vitamin D deficient.

Debra Kerr is the picture of health. The 56-year old grandmother loves working out and staying active. However, that wasn't always the case.
A boating accident in 2011 left her with several broken bones. After her body healed, Kerr was left with insomnia and overwhelming fatigue.
"This chronic exhaustion never went away. I thought it was a lot of work or a lot of travel. But, working with Dr. Gisele I realized there was a significant deficiency in Vitamin D," Kerr said.
"Vitamin D is vital for every function from bone health to brain health," Dr. Gisele Leon-Ritch said.
Being in sunlight is one way to get the Vitamin D we need, but with more people wearing sunscreen, doctors say many people, especially people with darker skin, are Vitamin D deficient.
"I would say in my practice 50% of my patients are Vitamin D deficient. In Debra's case, when she came to me,  she had chronic inflammation and insomnia," Leon-Ritch said.

For Kerr, finding out she was Vitamin D deficient was the real game changer.
A recent study showed a direct link between Vitamin D and better quality and quantity of sleep.
Once Kerr started taking Vitamin D supplements, things improved.
"My energy is there. I am high energy. I am always on the go. I don't have that level of fatigue that I used to have," Kerr said.
Sunlight is just one way to get a dose of Vitamin D. You also get Vitamin D in higher amounts from fatty fish like salmon, trout, and tuna or from fortified foods, such as milk and yogurt.

Vitamin D sources

Vitamin D is found in a variety of the foods we eat. Fatty fish, such as tuna, salmon, cod and mackerel, all contain high levels. Other foods, like milk and orange juice, can be fortified with it. There are also over-the-counter supplements you can take; however, some of them contain well over the recommended daily intake, and research has called their effectiveness into question. But the easiest way to obtain vitamin D is to just go outside on a sunny day.
A kind of cholesterol present throughout your skin naturally absorbs UVB radiation from the sun and converts it into a form of vitamin D.

Dr. Clifford Rosen, a professor of medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine and senior scientist at Maine Medical Center, said it's generally better to get vitamin D from the sun and food than from supplements.
Besides the fact that the sun is free while bottles of supplements are not, it is possible to take too much vitamin D, which could increase the risk of kidney stones and other health issues, Rosen said. The patients he sees who typically have excess vitamin D take daily supplements containing 5,000 to 10,000 units of the vitamin, significantly above the recommended daily amount.
On the other hand, biochemical pathways in our body prevent us from producing too much vitamin D from sun exposure, so it's not possible to "overdose" that way, said Paul Thomas, a scientific consultant for the National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements.

How much vitamin D is enough?

In 2010, a committee from the Institute of Medicine, now known as the National Academy of Medicine, recommended new guidelines for vitamin D intake and adequate blood serum levels of a vitamin D biomarker. Rosen, who served on the committee, said that people are typically at risk for developing deficiency if their serum level of the biomarker is less than 12 nanograms per millilitre, far below the adequate level of 20 ng/mL.

It is counterproductive to talk about vitamin D inadequacy or insufficiency because these levels are often relative, Rosen said, and can lead to conclusions that most of the US population is deficient or a small minority is, depending on the value chosen as "inadequate."

To attain the 20 ng/mL blood serum level of the vitamin D biomarker, the National Institutes of Health recommends an average daily amount that varies from 400 to 800 International Units of the vitamin, depending on one's age.
Thomas said there is "a range in which you can play," from the mid-hundreds to around 4,000 units of the vitamin per day, the safe upper limit according to the National Academy of Medicine.

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