Worldwide, approximately 1 billion people have inadequate levels of vitamin D in their own blood, and deficiencies can be found in all ethnicities and age groups.

Really in industrialized countries, health practitioners are seeing the resurgence of rickets, the bone-weakening disorder which was largely eradicated through vitamin D fortification. If you reside north of this line linking San Francisco to Philadelphia along with Athens to Beijing, odds are you never get enough vitamin D. The same holds true if you never find outside for at least a 15-minute daily walk in sunlight.

African Americans and others with dark skin, as well as older individuals, tend to have much lower rates of vitamin D as do people who are overweight or obese.

Why are such widespread vitamin D deficiencies of this great concern? Because research conducted in recent years shows that vitamin D plays with a far broader disease-fighting role than once thought. Being”D-ficient” can raise the possibility of a range of chronic diseases, such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, several cancers, and multiple sclerosis, in addition to infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and also the seasonal influenza.