The Sunshine Vitamin and Interstitial Cystitis

The Sunshine Vitamin and Interstitial Cystitis

Vitamin D is an essential nutrient, meaning that our bodies cannot manufacture it, therefore we need to get it from our food or outside sources. Unlike most essential nutrients, however, our bodies can make Vitamin D if we are exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays for a minimum of 10 minutes a day. Although 10 minutes doesn’t seem like much, if a person doesn’t get much exposure in the winter and avoids sun in the summer by covering the body with clothes and sunscreen, you can see how quickly a low level of the vitamin can develop.

A true Vitamin D deficiency in an adult would be evidenced by a softening of the bones called ‘osteomalacia.” This is actually very rare in the United States due to supplementation of the vitamin in a number of food products including most milk.

Trying to link Vitamin D to Interstitial Cystitis

What we are learning, however, is that a person does not need to be “deficient” in the classic sense of the word, but that Vitamin D levels can be very low contributing to a variety of common disorders. The problem with trying to link Vitamin D to interstitial cystitis is that prevalence of low Vitamin D in the interstitial cystitis population is probably not much different than we are seeing in the general population, which is quite high regardless of any other disease process. If you do an internet search for “Prevalence of low Vitamin D,” you can see the many different studies that have compared Vitamin D to various diseases. It is actually staggering.

The connection of Vitamin D to Interstitial Cystitis

Rather than totally discount the connection of Vitamin D to interstitial cystitis, it is important to recognize that anything that makes the body stronger as a whole can help interstitial cystitis patients, at least to some degree. Therefore, if you suspect your Vitamin D levels are low, talk to your physician about getting a blood level test to determine if you should take supplemental Vitamin D, and how much.

More information: interstitial-cystitis-diet.blogspot.com