Could this Vitamin Be the Answer to Urinary Tract Health?
If you’ve ever experienced an unhealthy urinary tract, then you understand just how important urinary tract health can be.
So you get plenty of water, and drink cranberry juice – but if you aren’t getting enough of one key vitamin, you could still be missing out!
So let me ask you – how much time do you spend in the sun?
Think it’s unrelated to urinary tract health?
Not when you realized that vitamin D is the key to a healthy urinary tract system!
And yet, up to 75% of the population could be vitamin D deficient!
Which makes it even more important to understand how vitamin D plays a role in urinary tract health.
First Things First
It helps, of course, to understand how the urinary tract works before
you can understand how to keep it healthy. Most people have a vague
concept of what the urinary tract system is…and it includes the
bladder…and that’s about it.Yes, the urinary tract does include the bladder, but it’s more than that, as well. Your urinary tract is made up of the kidneys, ureters, and bladder. Your kidneys filter blood, removing toxins and extra fluid from your body. This is urine. Which then moves from the kidneys to the bladder, via the ureters – thin tubes that run alongside your bladder. And finally, of course, your bladder, which stores the urine until you go to the bathroom and pass it. The muscles that keep the bladder closed and prevent leaks are the pelvic floor muscles, the urethra, and the bladder neck. We’ll come back to these muscles in a minute.
For now, to put all this in more interesting terms, your urinary tract is responsible for:
- Preventing waste and toxin buildup in the body
- Keeping potassium and other electrolyte levels stable
- Making hormones that help normalize blood pressure
- Creating red blood cells
- And keeping bones strong
And that’s where vitamin D comes in.
Linking Vitamin D and Urinary Tract Health
We’re back where we started – with the unpleasant symptoms that are
associated with an unhealthy urinary tract. And guess what has been
linked to those unpleasant symptoms? That’s right, vitamin D
deficiencies.Since the urinary tract’s job is to filter waste, it means that those microscopic toxins pass through the system – exposing the kidneys, ureters, and bladder to the very substances it needs to get rid of. Vitamin D produces a very specific anti-microbial peptide right there in the urinary tract. And what, exactly, does that mean? It means that vitamin D produces the very thing your body needs to maintain urinary tract health, exactly where your body needs it.
And that’s not the only way vitamin D contributes to urinary tract health. Remember the muscles that help prevent embarrassing leaks? Vitamin D deficiencies have been linked to those muscles – especially the pelvic floor muscles. In studies, adding vitamin D supplements helped resolve the issue!
Getting Enough Vitamin D: 3 Options
While all of this is important information and good to know, what are
you supposed to do now? That’s easy. Make sure you’re getting enough
vitamin D.Start with sunlight. There’s a reason vitamin D is known as “the sunshine vitamin.” Your body can actually get all the vitamin D it needs from spending time in the sun. The only problem is that, depending on several factors like where you live and what time of year it is, it can be challenging to spend enough time outside to get vitamin D but not cross over into sun damage. Generally speaking, for best results, try to be outside when your shadow is shorter than you are tall.
Fair skinned people can get enough vitamin D by spending about ten minutes outside in the summer. But older people and people with darker complexions will have a more difficult time getting the vitamin they need for urinary tract health from sun alone, even in summer. And in winter, it’s almost impossible for people living in the northern half of the country to get enough sun.
Remember diet. The truth is that diet alone won’t give you enough vitamin D to promote urinary tract and overall health. However, you can still boost your vitamin D intake by eating the right foods. Fortified foods, like milk and cereal, can be reasonable sources of vitamin D. Some foods, like fatty fish (think salmon) and egg yolks are natural sources of the vitamin. Work some of these into your diet and you’ll get closer to closing the vitamin D gap.
Don’t shy away from supplements. In order for most people to get the amount of vitamin D they need, year-round, it’s going to require supplements, along with time in the sun and diet. You can certainly take individual supplements, but for optimal urinary tract health, consider a formula specifically designed to support every part of your urinary tract system, like ProTeva Plus.
Getting enough vitamin D is more important to urinary tract health than you may have realized.
Luckily, it’s also easier than you may have thought – with sunlight, diet, and ProTeva Plus!
The information provided in the NorthStar Nutritionals blog is intended for educational purposes only.
Categories: Urinary Health.
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