admineat junk food instead of healthy whole foods. So there’s plenty of reason to be concerned about a deficiency of vitamin D, also known as the “sunshine vitamin”, in this segment of the population. And, in fact, two just released studies show that youth are facing potentially severe health consequences from a lack of this important vitamin.
At the American Heart Association’s 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, Jared P. Reis, Ph.D., and his team of researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore announced their findings of a study of 3,577 adolescents, 12 to 19 years old (51 percent boys), who participated in the nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted from 2001.
Low levels of vitamin D could also help explain why teens are becoming fatter. A lack of the vitamin is strongly associated with being overweight and obesity centered around the abdomen, Reis noted.
About four times more likely to have metabolic syndrome, a group of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk factors that includes an increased waist circumference, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL or “good”) cholesterol and high fasting glucose levels.
But how widespread is the lack of vitamin D in teens? Another study by researchers in the Department of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College published in the March issue last year of the journal Pediatrics gives the answer – about one in seven.
Girls were found to have twice the risk of vitamin D deficiency than boys. What’s more, overweight teens had nearly double the risk of being vitamin D deficit than their counterparts of normal weight.
The study used new criteria of vitamin D deficiency recommended by a group of scientists who worked together at the 13th Workshop Consensus for Vitamin D Nutritional Guidelines in 2007. Getting enough sunshine is also a healthy way to boost levels of the vitamin.
According to the National Institutes of Health website, approximately five to 30 minutes of sun exposure between 10am and 3pm at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back without usually leads to sufficient vitamin D synthesis.
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