Does Vitamin D Work With Other Vitamins To Help Keep The Body Healthy?

Vitamin D interacts with other vitamins, minerals and hormones to ensure your health and well-being. Vitamin D works together with the other fat-soluble vitamins -- A, E and K -- and with vitamin C to maintain the health and strength of your bones, according to the Office of Dietary Supplements. It is a balancing act. Too much of one and not enough of the others can cause problems.

Identification

Vitamin D occurs naturally in only a few foods, but is added to some foods and is available as a supplement. Unlike other vitamins, it can also be produced in your body when sunlight acts on your skin and triggers its synthesis. Fish, such as salmon, tuna and mackerel, and fish liver oils provide the best food sources. Most of the vitamin D in the typical American diet comes from fortified foods, including milk, some orange juice products, yogurt, margarine and infant formula. The recommended dietary allowance, or RDA, is 15 micrograms of vitamin D per day for those from 1 to 70, and 20 micrograms per day for persons over 70. A vitamin D deficiency can lead to rickets in children and osteoporosis in adults.

Vitamins A, C and K

Vitamin D serves on your bone-making team along with other nutrients, including vitamins A, C and K. Working with these other vitamins, Vitamin D helps to regulate the processes that develop bone, perform skeletal and heart muscle functions, regulate insulin activity, maintain calcium and phosphorus balance, and regulate your immune response.

Parathyroid Hormone

Parathyroid hormone, or PTH, and vitamin D work together to regulate bone health. Vitamin D causes your intestines to absorb calcium from your food and helps your kidneys hold on to calcium when more is needed by your body. Vitamin D also helps your body retain phosphorus. PTH triggers the conversion of a vitamin D precursor to the active form of vitamin D. Together, PTH and vitamin D help ensure a proper balance of calcium and phosphorus in your blood and in your bones.

Vitamin K

Vitamin D helps your body absorb and use calcium, but without enough vitamin K to regulate the system, vitamin D can cause soft-tissue calcification. This can result in serious problems if it occurs in the valves in your heart and in your arteries. While vitamins A and D help with bone growth, vitamin K helps ensure that the areas of growth do not calcify too quickly and stunt growth. Both vitamin D and vitamin K help regulate the production of calcium-binding proteins needed by your bones and kidneys. Other potential interactions between vitamin D and vitamin K are being actively researched.