By: Andreas Moritz (2012)
The best way to make vitamin D is to spend a little time in the sunshine without sunscreen or to eat foods that are naturally rich in vitamin D. These are foods like:
- Fatty fish
- High quality cod liver oil
- Egg yolks from pastured hens
- Liver from grass-fed animals
These foods are rich in natural vitamin D3. (Avoid foods that are fortified with synthetic vitamin D2, as this form of vitamin D can be toxic in the human body.)
Vitamin D deficiency is rampant, despite fortified milk, supplements and freely available sunshine.
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. (Natural News – Meditation nourishes the brain)
Learn more: Natural News – Are stress and high cortisol depleting your vitamin D?