Mapping Ignorance: Vitamin D receptor, a powerful weapon against colorectal cancer
Check our latest article in Mapping Ignorance: Vitamin D receptor, a powerful weapon against colorectal cancer.
Vitamin D is an atypical vitamin because it is not a real vitamin. Vitamins are supposed to be essential, meaning that our organism cannot live without them but their synthesis cannot take place in our cells, so we must ensure an external intake through the diet. However, only 10% of vitamin D daily requirements come from the diet, and 90% is photochemically produced in our skin on the presence of UVB radiation, that is, sunlight.
Hence, our body requires sun exposure to synthesize vitamin D. Recommendations about the time of sun exposure needed to cover vitamin D daily requests are vague as these depend on the energy of sun radiation, which ultimately depends on latitude (distance from the equator) and season of the year. Moreover, each of us synthesizes and regulates vitamin D levels differently in accordance to age (it decreases as we grow older), skin colour (there are lower levels in dark skin), metabolism, weight…
