Humans need sunlight to survive and thrive, but lifestyle changes and environmental changes are reducing sunlight access and that, in turn, is fostering the need to supplement the human body's need for vitamin D with man-made options, from holistic remedies to enriched milk.
While that's a good strategy, supplementing Vitamin D also brings a wide range of health concerns as well. Too much or too little will have an impact on a person's body and some claim even personality and mood. Ingesting vitamin D through food versus supplements also has its critics and advocates.
A look at recent research reports reveals a lot of laboratory research happening on vitamin D use, need and impact, and a lot of debate on whether the research is valid and needed or unnecessary.
One recent study claims vitamin D level doesn't play into human falls, another claims high levels can stave off breast cancer.
The latest report reveals low vitamin D levels may increase a person's pain sensitivity.
The cohort study, published in Pain Medicine, comes on the heels of similar findings, say reports. An earlier study claimed low vitamin D led to higher pain for osteoarthritis patients who suffered a physical injury (called mechanical in study terms) to tissue.
In the most recent study, researchers from Bern University Hospital and University of Bern in Switzerland wanted to find out if low vitamin D levels in a sample of patients with chronic pain disorders may produce the same result.
The study involved 174 patients with chronic pain. Vitamin D levels were tested. To discover impact when a 'mechanical' incident occurred a clamp was placed on a patient's nail bed of the middle fingers. Patients then noted the pain on a scale of zero to 10 (intense pain).
Results revealed that patients with lower vitamin D reported the highest pain level.
"We found a significant inverse association between continuously scaled 25-OH D levels and mechanical pain sensitivity. This finding is in agreement with experimental animal work on provoked pain sensitivity."
Researchers acknowledge that further investigation is required given it wasn't clear what patients depended on for vitamin D.
