Vitamins have many different roles in the human body and are essential for human health. A lack of vitamin D is known to weaken your bones and cause other problems, but recent evidence has also suggested that your vitamin D levels affect your risk of developing multiple sclerosis. Talk to your doctor before taking vitamin D or any other supplement.
What Is Multiple Sclerosis?
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune condition, which means that it is the result of your immune system attacking healthy tissue in your body. If you have multiple sclerosis, your immune system attacks a substance known as myelin. Myelin coats your nerves and speeds up nerve signals. Multiple sclerosis damages these nerves and causes a variety of symptoms, such as a loss of balance, paralysis, loss of vision, pain, depression, hearing loss and trouble thinking or reasoning. It is not known what triggers multiple sclerosis and there is no cure.
Vitamin D and Multiple Sclerosis Risk
Vitamin D is a vitamin that is found naturally in some foods, is added to others and can be synthesized by the body in response to sunlight. Vitamin D2 is the form of the vitamin synthesized by plants. Vitamin D is best known for its role in calcium absorption and the maintenance of bone health, but it also has a number of other roles in the body, including the regulation of the immune system. According to a 2006 article in the "Journal of the American Medical Association," having higher levels of vitamin D in your blood reduces your risk of developing multiple sclerosis.
Vitamin D as Treatment for Multiple Sclerosis
Because vitamin D levels are inversely associated with your risk of developing multiple sclerosis, there is the possibility that administering vitamin D supplements could help treat multiple sclerosis. According to a 2010 article in "The Lancet Neurology", vitamin D supplements may help prevent flareups of multiple sclerosis, but more research needs to be done to confirm these effects. These trials also used vitamin D3 supplements, not vitamin D2, so it is not known if increasing your intake of vitamin D2 can help with multiple sclerosis.
Safety
Although vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 are safe when taken at normal levels, high doses of any form of vitamin D can cause serious health problems. Too much vitamin D can cause your calcium levels to get too high, resulting in muscle, heart and neurological problems as well as weakened bones. Talk to your doctor before taking any sort of supplement that contains vitamin D.
