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Type II diabetes is a condition in which the body has a hard time managing sugar the right way. Usually you develop type II diabetes in adulthood, past the age of 40, but you can develop it earlier, too. Once you get type II diabetes, it lasts for the rest of your life. If your diabetes isn’t managed, you can develop diabetes symptoms, including eyesight issues, skin conditions, circulation problems, and high blood pressure. Type II diabetes (T2D) usually occurs gradually, meaning that the condition is mild to start but gets worse and worse as time goes by. Most people with the disease are overweight when they are diagnosed. Treatments for T2D require lifelong monitoring of sugar levels in your blood, healthy eating, regular exercising, and possibly diabetes medication. Some people with T2D can manage their condition with diet and exercise alone, but many need additional help with medications. Researchers are interested in whether vitamin D helps your body manage sugar in your blood. Additionally, they’re interested in vitamin D’s role in regulating calcium, which also helps manage sugar in your blood.
There is some research showing that young people who have higher vitamin D levels decreased their chances of developing T2D later in life compared to people who had lower vitamin D levels. Studies have also shown that vitamin D supplements can help some symptoms of T2D. At this time, the research is conflicting on whether supplementing people at high risk of developing diabetes is helpful in reducing the risk of T2D. If you are at risk of T2D and want to take vitamin D, it is unlikely to harm you or make your symptoms worse. However, it may not prevent diabetes. There is some evidence that vitamin D will improve symptoms associated with T2D, if you have T2D. You should not take vitamin D in the place of other medications for your condition. Talk to your doctor about taking vitamin D or any other supplement.
Type II diabetes is a condition in which the body has a hard time managing sugar the right way. Usually you develop type II diabetes in adulthood, past the age of 40, but you can develop it earlier, too. Once you get type II diabetes, it lasts for the rest of your life. Beta cells in your pancreas make a hormone called insulin. Insulin helps to shuttle the glucose that enters your bloodstream after a meal into your liver and muscle tissues. Insulin ensures your body either uses or stores this glucose, helping your body to manage glucose the right way. People with type II diabetes (T2D) either:
When glucose starts to build up in the blood stream instead of being used or stored, it can cause diabetes complications. Complications include eyesight issues, skin conditions, and high blood pressure.2 T2D usually occurs gradually, meaning that the condition is mild to start but gets worse and worse as time goes by. Most people with the disease are overweight when they are diagnosed. An excess of fat makes it difficult for your body to use insulin correctly. Treatments for T2D require lifelong monitoring of sugar levels in your blood, healthy eating, regular exercising, and possibly diabetes medication. Some people with T2D can manage their condition with diet and exercise alone, but many need additional help with medications.
T2D has become a common condition in recent years. Currently 8.3% of the US population has T2D. The percentage of people with T2D is increasing worldwide, and more than one million people are newly diagnosed in the United States annually.3
Symptoms of T2D often occur slowly. You can have T2D for years and not know it. Here are some symptoms you might have if you have T2D:4
If you have some of these symptoms or you are concerned that you might have T2D, setup an appointment with your doctor.
T2D occurs when the body stops producing enough insulin or the body becomes “resistant” to insulin. What we mean by resistant to insulin is that for reasons researchers don’t fully understand, the body doesn’t use insulin as much as it should. Exactly why this happens is not fully clear, although being overweight and lack of physical activity seem to play a role. Beta cells in the pancreas make a hormone called insulin. The pancreas releases insulin after you eat to allow glucose from your food to enter your liver and muscle tissue. T2D occurs when:
Without enough insulin being used, your body doesn’t break down sugar into glucose. Then your body’s cells don’t get the glucose they need. When your cells aren’t getting enough glucose, they don’t function the right way and sugar builds up in the blood stream and can cause damage to multiple areas of the body, including damage to your nerves and kidneys. Some people are more likely to get T2D than others. Certain factors increase your chances of getting T2D, though it’s not fully understood why some of these factors increase your chances. Factors include:5
Vitamin D is most known for its role in bone health, but researchers are beginning to uncover its role in many other areas of your health. Doctors believe there is a link between vitamin D and T2D because studies have shown that people who have the lowest vitamin D levels in their blood are at an increased risk of developing T2D later in life. They also notice that people newly diagnosed with T2D often have lower vitamin D levels than people without diabetes. Doctors and scientists think that vitamin D may have a hand in T2D by playing a role in your pancreatic beta-cell function, insulin action, and inflammation. Let us explain a little more:
If you have T2D, sometimes the beta cells in your pancreas that produce insulin don’t work the right way. Researchers are interested in vitamin D because there are specific receptors in pancreatic beta cells that only start “turning-on” if they get enough vitamin D. Researchers think that getting enough vitamin D can help your pancreatic beta cells function properly. They have done studies on animals where they removed these vitamin D receptors, and these animals couldn’t produce as much insulin as they should.6
Insulin sensitivity occurs when your body is “sensitive” to insulin. If you are sensitive to insulin, you don’t need very much insulin to help your body turn sugar into glucose, your body’s main source of energy, because your body uses insulin well. On the other hand, people with T2D are often “resistant” to insulin, where their bodies don’t use insulin very well at all. People with T2D lack sensitivity to insulin and have resistance to insulin. Researchers are interested in the role vitamin D plays in improving insulin sensitivity and increasing insulin secretion. Studies have reported a link between low vitamin D and decreased insulin sensitivity.7, 8 Furthermore, vitamin D plays an important part in the regulation of calcium. Calcium helps to control the release of insulin, so alterations in calcium can have a negative effect on beta cell function, which may hinder normal insulin release. Some scientists and doctors believe that if vitamin D helps proper insulin function, some of its effects might be because of calcium.
Several studies have looked at how much vitamin D people get and if they develop T2D later in life. There have been three recent reviews, where researchers looked at all the studies out there on vitamin D and T2D, combined them, and determined if there was a connection between vitamin D and T2D.
However, these reviews mainly looked at studies that were observational, meaning we don’t know if low vitamin D caused T2D later in life or if low vitamin D was associated with some other unknown risk factor which caused T2D to develop later in life. A recent trial in 2011 gave 2000 adults at high risk of T2D either 2000 IU of vitamin D per day or 400 mg calcium. They wanted to see if vitamin D helped improve symptoms associated with T2D compared to participants who didn’t get vitamin D. They found that vitamin D supplementation improved pancreatic B cell function – important for making insulin – and helped control the rise of blood sugar.12 However on the other hand, another very recent trial found that vitamin D supplementation in people with pre-diabetes (higher than normal blood sugar levels) had no effect in reducing people’s chances of getting diabetes later. Furthermore, people who supplemented with vitamin D didn’t produce more insulin and they weren’t any more sensitive to insulin than those taking a dummy pill. They were also just as likely to get diabetes later in life as people taking the dummy pill.13
Researchers are interested in vitamin D for improving certain aspects of T2D. They want to know if getting enough vitamin D can help:
There have been a few trials that have looked if vitamin D can help in these aspects. Three trials report:
On the other hand, there are three small trials which found that vitamin D supplementation in patients with T2D didn’t significantly decrease blood sugar levels, regulate glucose management, and decrease insulin resistance. However, these trials were fairly small and had relatively short study lengths, making it hard to get a good picture if vitamin D had any effect (2-6 months).9
There is currently some evidence that getting enough vitamin D may reduce your risk of developing T2D, although what are called large scale intervention studies are needed before we can say for sure. There is intriguing research suggesting that supplementing with vitamin D may help improve some of the aspects associated with T2D. Studies have shown that vitamin D supplementation improves insulin sensitivity and decreased blood sugar levels. However, not all people with T2D see improvement in symptoms. If you or someone you know has T2D, it’s unlikely that taking vitamin D will make your symptoms worse or cause any harm if you take 10,000 IU or less daily, although you may not see improvement in your T2D either. If you have T2D, it’s important to talk to your doctor about taking vitamin D or any other supplements. Don’t take vitamin D in place of any medications you are currently prescribed.