The Effects of Vitamin D on Type One Diabetes

Type One Diabetes is a disease that affects people of all ages all across the world. Type One Diabetes is a disease that makes one’s pancreas stop working permanently. I have seen it first hand, my younger brother was diagnosed around 6 years ago on his 6th birthday. About a week in the hospital later, my parents were tasked with the responsibility of giving him insulin shots whenever his blood sugar got too low or too high. He cannot regulate his blood sugar like the rest of us can because his pancreas does not work. If my little brother’s blood sugar is left unregulated, he will die. Vitamin D, due to recent sources, has emerged as a possible treatment to Type One Diabetes. This literature review is being written because more people need to be aware of a possible ailment or treatment to the horrible disease of diabetes.

Throughout this Literature Review, literature will be reviewed on if Type One Diabetes can be possibly treated with Vitamin D. Vitamin D is a compound of two fat soluble substances. These two act together as one to make Vitamin D, which is activated by ultraviolet light. Vitamin D acts more like a hormone than a vitamin because it acts by binding to specific cytosolic receptors, not only in intestinal epithelial cells cells and osteocytes, but also in many other tissues in the body. What this means is that Vitamin D is not like other vitamins in terms of a definition of a vitamin. Although Vitamin D is different from other vitamins, the fact that it can help heal diseases and the human body needs more help with maintaining it’s immune system. The immune system is the number one system to be strengthened when it comes to fighting diseases. This is important to help treating Type One Diabetes because hormones are much more effective than vitamins at helping the body fight off disease. Type One Diabetes is a disease. Vitamin D deficiency illnesses, in recent years, have been more associated with a higher risk for a person to get a disease in their inner organs.

If a deficiency of Vitamin D is related to a higher risk to diseases like Type One, then the conclusion could be drawn that excess amounts of Vitamin D will help to treat these illnesses. With an increase of Type One Diabetes cases on the rise, especially in children, excess Vitamin D could be administered to these patients easier and cheaper. The cost of this is not much at all. All one has to do to reach an increase in Vitamin D in their blood stream is to eat more dairy and fish products as well as getting out in the sun more often. These trigger the two hydroxylations in the body for the ability to activate. Although of this, over 50 nanograms per milliliter can be plagued with reversing effects of the reaction between the two fat soluble components of Vitamin D.

So to get a maximum efficiency of Vitamin D, one intake should be 49 nanograms per milliliter, or less. No shots needed, or anything like that. Just get your daily intake of Vitamin D on the ride to work on a bike, or eat salmon with dinner. Or if a patient really wants to get Vitamin D out of foods they could pour cod oil on their food. (Institute of Medicine (U.S.) Committee to Review Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium, 2011). To get more specific to Type One Diabetes, diabetes is a disease that makes the pancreas lack insulin to regulate glucose levels in your body. The way Vitamin D works in your body is that in experiments, the active version of Vitamin D (25-dihydroxyvitamin D), responded positively to tests testing if it would strengthen the immune system and strengthen the endothelial membranes’ stability. This active version of Vitamin D is still a bit controversial in the medical community and if it does or does not help heal auto-immune diseases. Type One Diabetes Mellitus affects the pancreas’s ability to make and produce insulin, the strength of cells and things of that source have more to do with carcinogenesis. 

Even though these benefits of Vitamin D do not affect specific cells inside of the pancreas, the actual glucose cells, along with white and red cells could get stronger, which would help fight off diseases easier and transport the sugar easier all across the body. Type One Diabetes, along with other diseases, could greatly improve due to an increase of Vitamin D just because the abilities it can perform for the cells of the body.