Half of World's Population Suffer from Vitamin D Deficiency

A health expert has said that more than half of the world's population gets insufficient vitamin D. Anthony Norman, a distinguished professor emeritus of biochemistry and biomedical sciences and an international expert on vitamin D, notes that half the people in North America and Western Europe get insufficient amounts of vitamin D.

"Elsewhere, it is worse given that two-thirds of the people are vitamin D-insufficient or deficient. It is clear that merely eating vitamin D-rich foods is not adequate to solve the problem for most adults," said Norman.

"A 2000 IU daily intake can be achieved by a combination of sunshine, food, supplements, and possibly even limited tanning exposure," he said.

Vitamin D intake has already shown to be effective in breast cancer, colon cancer and type-1 diabetes.

Because vitamin D is found in very few foods naturally (e.g. fish, eggs and cod liver oil) other foods such as milk, orange juice, some yoghurt and some breakfast foods are fortified with it.

"There is now irrevocable evidence that receptors in the immune, pancreas, heart-cardiovascular, muscle and brain systems in the body generate biological responses to the steroid hormone form of vitamin D," he says.

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Source-ANI