Vitamin D3 & Obesity

Vitamin D3 provides many benefits to your body, including lowering risk of health problems like cancer, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and autoimmune diseases. Also known as cholecalciferol, vitamin D3 can be made by your body. When you don't get enough vitamin D3, the deficiency has profound ability to affect your weight. In fact, lack of sufficient vitamin D3 is linked to obesity.

What is Vitamin D3?

Vitamin D3 is actually a precursor to a hormone. D3 gets produced when you expose your skin to sunlight. Once inside the body, it goes to the liver and kidneys, getting converted to different forms with each step. Its main function in your body is to help you absorb and metabolize calcium and phosphorus. Public health authorities updated the daily amount of vitamin D you should get in December 2010. From birth until about age 50, you need 5 mcg daily, and then 10 to 15 thereafter.

Vitamin D3, Calcium and Fat

Having a vitamin D3 deficiency is linked to obesity. One reason for this effect is related to its work with calcium. People who are obese tend to have less calcium in their diet than healthy-weight people, and when they increase calcium and vitamin D, they can experience both fat loss and a suppressed appetite, according to a report in the March 2009 "British Journal of Nutrition." Vitamin D3 is critical to calcium's ability to work in increasing fat metabolism, promoting lean muscle and increasing weight loss. In addition, taking more calcium with vitamin D3 helps to slow down middle-age weight gain, according to a MayoClinic.com feature evaluating clinical evidence.

Vitamin D3 Availability and Weight

Obesity can make a person more susceptible to vitamin D3 deficiency, according to a study published in September 2000 in the issue of "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." The National Institutes of Health-sponsored study found that obese subjects had 57 percent less vitamin D in their blood than healthy-weight individuals following the same amount of sunlight exposure. The authors concluded that body mass index was inversely related to the level of D3 in the blood. They think this happens because fat may soak up too much of it, leaving too little behind for other processes.

Vitamin D3, Winter Response and Obesity

Obesity could be caused by not getting enough sunlight to produce vitamin D3, suggests an article published in the March 2009 issue of "Medical Hypotheses," which says that gaining body mass is your body's faulty adaptation to cold temperature. As a survival tactic to deal with food shortages, your body adjusts its metabolism to accumulate fat when it detects a drop in vitamin D levels. In winter, you go outside less and even when you do, if you live in certain regions you may not get enough of the appropriate ultraviolet rays to produce sufficient vitamin D3. Even when it's not winter, your overeating causes fat gain, which leaves too little vitamin D3 for important health functions, producing this same winter response.