Vitamin Doh

I’ve been reading a lot about vitamin D recently, and it seems the information out there points to one thing: the vitamin that our bodies naturally produce under sun exposure is a cure-all. Like green tea, it’s supposed to help prevent cancer, make you healthier and happier and it just might fight off death, too.

While most vitamin D studies are observational, there is one thing that it certainly does for our bodies–it helps the absorption of calcium for bone health and density. Whether you get vitamin D from foods like fish or fortified milk, or from unprotected exposure to the sun, it will give your bones what they need to stay healthy.

Wikipedia says:

Vitamin D deficiency can result in lower bone mineral density and an increased risk of bone loss (osteoporosis) or bone fracture because a lack of vitamin D alters mineral metabolism in the body.

This made me think of the fall and winter of 2005 heading into 2006. I was involved in a motorcycle accident and found myself crippled with a fractured cervical vertebra and navicular bone. For months, I was confined to my bedroom, unable to walk. Luckily, my neck healed just fine, but my foot, where the navicular bone is located, was giving me serious problems.

My orthopedic surgeon put a cast on my foot just a few days after my accident and told me it should take six weeks to heal. This would have been just in time for Thanksgiving. When I came back to have the cast removed, X-Rays showed that the bone hadn’t healed yet, and so I’d have to wear a cast for another six weeks. Not bad, I thought, it will be off by New Year’s Eve.

Six weeks later, there was no sign of progress, so the doctor changed me into a fresh, new cast and said that we’d start some sort of therapy involving ultrasound. I was skeptical, but it was worth a shot. Doc said he’d order some sort of apparatus that would envelope my foot and help the healing process. Fast forward another six weeks and there was no machine: when the doctor gave the verbal order to his minions, it was lost in memory and no one ordered the device. But by then, my foot was in terrible shape.

After a few months of wearing a cast, my foot was undergoing osteoporosis–it was losing bone density. In order for bones to keep their density, they need calcium and, I didn’t know this at the time, to bear weight. I hadn’t been walking on my foot at all, so the doctor gave me a walking cast and told me to start walking slowly and to stomp my foot every now and then.

What irks me now is that the outcome of my recovery could have been dramatically affected by the miracle-bone-healing-machine that was ordered too late, and if I’d known the role that vitamin D plays in bone health. How much vitamin D did I get during that time? I rarely drank fortified milk, I wasn’t eating any vitamin D-rich foods and we can forget about sunlight, too. My daily routine involved waking up, staying in my room and staying in my room some more.

Today, I can walk just fine. If I’m careful, I can even play some sports. However, my navicular bone is still broken – right in half. It’s a little unbelievable, but it’s only painful on days when I take very long walks – I’m talking several hours – or days after I’ve played a few hours of tennis. I never regained full range of motion in that foot, and I probably never will.

Would things have been different if I’d been more careful about ingesting enough vitamin D and soaking up plenty of sunlight? Maybe. It couldn’t have hurt. If you’ve broken any bones, are nursing a broken bone or suffering from osteoporosis, be sure to get enough calcium and vitamin D in your diet and through natural sunlight! Just be careful about getting burned in the sun – you don’t want to have healthy bones and end up with skin cancer.

Further reading:

Vitamin D for bone health – Wikipedia
Vitamin D – National Institutes of Health
Mayo Clinic on Vitamin D

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