Very few people are able to get sufficient quantities of vitamin D through their diet. The symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency include aching muscles, as well as weakness and pain in the bones.

Pregnant women who have a vitamin D deficiency will pass this deficiency on to their baby. The first symptoms of deficiency in infants may be muscle spasms, caused by insufficient calcium, due to malabsorption by a lack of vitamin D. If you’re breastfeeding your child, talk with your physician about vitamin D supplementation and exposure to sunlight, in healthy amounts, for your baby. Breastfeeding has many health benefits for your baby, but breast milk contains very little vitamin D.

Older people and people with darker skin are more vulnerable to this deficiency. In both cases, the requirements for vitamin D increase. Older persons may have malabsorption problems. Darker skinned persons do not form the same amounts of vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. Both groups should probably have a blood test to determine the vitamin D levels in their blood. If you are deficient, consult with your doctor to determine a proper amount of supplementation.

Other repercussions may result from a vitamin D deficiency. For example, your body may try to compensate for the lack of adequate levels of calcium in the blood (caused by inadequate levels of vitamin D), by producing excessive amounts of the parathyroid hormone, eventually resulting in a condition called hyper-parathyroidism. This hormone causes calcium to be drawn out of the bones. In the case of osteoporosis, this naturally worsens your condition.Some health conditions, including genetic disorders, diseases of the kidney or liver, as well as certain medications can impair your body’s ability to convert vitamin D to a usable form.

Vitamin D is stored in the liver and metabolized through the kidneys into its active, or usable form. Only your doctor can determine the dose that’s right for you, so don’t experiment. Effective dosages range from 400 – 2000 i.u’s daily.

If you suspect you have a vitamin D deficiency, have your doctor perform blood tests to determine if this is the case. Vitamin D3 is what you want as the form of supplement, as it’s the most readily metabolized. Fatty fish, such as salmon, are good sources of vitamin D3.

You can see that you can eliminate several annoying aches and pains, while warding off the severity and development of related health conditions. The good news here is that when you restore adequate levels of vitamin D, you eliminate all the problems associated with a vitamin D deficiency. It’s worth checking out!

While there are medications to slow the progress of rheumatoid arthritis, there are none available today for osteoarthritis. Your physician may simply prescribe pain medication to deal with the pain and leave it at that. As anyone with osteoarthritis knows, taking pain pills on an ongoing basis is no way to live.

However, many recent studies irrefutably demonstrate that magnesium supplements can not only reverse bone loss, but can actually rebuild your bone tissue. When magnesium supplements, in a 2:3 balanced ratio of calcium-magnesium are taken, bone density has increased by up to a startling 11% in just nine months!

Osteoarthritis is just the beginning. Osteoporosis is the next phase, where bone and joint tissue deteriorate, eventually resulting in fractures of bones and frequently, hip joints.

At first glance, it may seem reasonable that, as we age, conditions such as osteoarthritis are to be expected. The fact is that, as we age, certain nutrients are not as readily absorbed. Magnesium is just one of these. Magnesium deficiency effectively disables the hormone calcitonin, resulting in calcium being deposited in soft tissue and not into your bones.

Diet has much to do with osteoarthritis. Eating foods rich in calcium produces strong bones, right? To a point. You must also balance your calcium intake with magnesium in sufficient amounts. Otherwise, excess calcium stimulates the hormone , parathyroid (PTH), which tells the body to pull calcium out of your bones and deposit the excess in soft tissues. This process is also implicated in arteriosclerosis. Magnesium supplements restore a balanced hormone response, and thus, bone loss.

Let’s look at the diets in several areas of the world and compare the rates of arthritis and osteoporosis to prove the case for magnesium supplements as a natural remedy.The typical South African diet supplies a healthy 2:3 ratio of calcium to magnesium and these people have one of the lowest rates of arthritis and osteoporosis. The typical American diet, rich in calcium, is typically in a 10:1 calcium-magnesium ratio and we have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis and arthritis in the world! In Asian and African cultures, these conditions are relatively unknown. The bottom line is that when calcium intake is high and magnesium intake is low, these debilitating conditions are rampant.

What’s the answer? Decreasing your calcium intake and taking a daily magnesium supplement of at least 600mg, can produce dramatic results, in just nine months.

If you suffer from osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, or both, talk to your physician and see if magnesium supplements aren’t a valuable remedy that gets you off those pain pills soon! Bring this info with you!