How to Treat a Vitamin D Deficiency
A minor vitamin D deficiency is most often treated with vitamin D supplements. While a diet that includes fatty fish such as salmon and foods supplemented with vitamin D can help, few people get enough vitamin D through diet alone.
Sun exposure is also important to your body’s natural production of vitamin D. But many people limit their exposure to the sun to avoid skin cancer, or simply because they live their lives mostly indoors.
As a result, many people don’t get enough vitamin D. Fortunately, there are ways for both men and women to treat a Vitamin D deficiency.
Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency
The symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are not easy to notice in their early stages. Still, there are some symptoms that people–especially women–should look out for.
Symptoms such as bloating, chronic pain, constipation, decreased sex drive, depression, insomnia and general weakness can be indicators of a mild to moderate vitamin D deficiency.
Some of those symptoms are common to other diseases and deficiencies as well, so without proper testing, they can be hard to link to vitamin D deficiency.
If these symptoms go untreated, and your body continues to operate with inadequate levels of vitamin D, you could actually experience some critical health issues. These include heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and stroke.
Various Treatments for Vitamin D Deficiency
Logic would tell you that a vitamin D deficiency should be treated with vitamin D supplements. But what we think of as vitamin D isn’t actually a vitamin. It’s a hormone your body naturally creates to help your body maintain its mental, emotional, and physical health.
Since a vitamin D deficiency is a lack of adequate hormone production, one solution may be bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). Bioidentical hormones are created in a lab to be chemically identical to the hormones your body makes when it’s functioning optimally. They have been in use throughout the developed world since the 1930s.
Given how hard a vitamin D deficiency is to detect and how serious the consequences of one are, it’s essential to know whether your vitamin D levels are optimal or not. From there, you and your physician can discuss what treatment options may be best for you.
Improve Your Life by Addressing Your Vitamin D Deficiency
There’s no reason to let a vitamin D deficiency interfere with your well-being. Get your levels checked as soon as you can, so you can live a healthier, more active life. Call 480-718-9960 or send us a message to make an appointment with one of our caring professionals today.
