Vitamin D has long been touted for its benefits to bone health. But more and more research is showing a bigger role in health. Not only does Vitamin D help your body use calcium, regulate the immune system and ward off disease, but more and more research suggests vitamin D is critical to heart health.

In a study, adults who had the highest vitamin D levels had the lowest level of “cardiometabolic disorders” — the family of conditions that includes heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. It’s all thanks to vitamin D’s ability to reduce oxidative stress — a physiological process thought to encourage aging and cell damage. Vitamin D also may help decrease levels of parathyroid hormones that damage blood vessels. And if you have high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, or heart disease, getting enough Vitamin D may be a safeguard against some of the damage that comes with those conditions.

New research is suggesting that vitamin D may help reduce a person’s risk of dying from a stroke — by as much as 50 percent! And of course, finding out how to prevent a stroke naturally is always a plus.

More research is needed to confirm the link, but a Finnish study that followed about 6,000 people for more than 25 years showed that those with the highest Vitamin D intake were significantly less likely to die of either stroke or heart disease, compared with the people with the lowest Vitamin D intake. Those could be really big health benefits of vitamin D from one little pill.

Are you Vitamin D deficient?

Vitamin D deficiency is the most common and easiest indicator of your health you need to be familiar with. Vitamin D is critical to your dental and overall health.

Unfortunately, there’s a good chance you have low vitamin D. If you have any of the following you likely have low vitamin D levels.

• Work indoors
• Don’t regularly get full body sunlight
• Avoid getting sun
• Aren’t eating nutrient diet rich in fat soluble vitamins – A,D, K2
• Eat a vegan diet

What are the symptoms of low vitamin D?

The 10 most common symptoms of low vitamin D are:

1. Getting sick easily or often
2. Fatigue
3. Chronic pain (often in your bones)
4. Depression
5. Gut issues
6. Wounds that don’t heal
7. Head sweating
8. Bones that break easily
9. Hair loss
10. Weakness

Risk factors for vitamin D deficiency

There are several factors that put people at a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency, including:

• Being older
• Having darker skin
• Being overweight
• You have high muscle mass and low fat
• Not eating dairy or being vegetarian
• Living further from the equator
• Living in a polluted city
• Overly protecting yourself from the sun
• Not going outside often
• Having impaired kidneys
• Having digestive issues

Are you getting enough?

Here’s how the Vitamin D Council breaks it down:

• Deficient: 0-40 ng/ml (0-100 nmol/l)
• Sufficient: 40-80 ng/ml (100-200 nmol/l)
• High Normal: 80-100 ng/ml (200-250 nmol/l)
• Undesirable: > 100 ng/ml (> 250 nmol/l)

About 30-40 percent of people may be deficient in vitamin D. In a recent study, people who showed symptoms of vitamin D deficiency — such as bone pain and muscle weakness — had stiffer arteries and the cells that lined their arteries showed greater signs of dysfunction. But everything got better quickly — and their blood pressure improved, too! — once they got their D levels back to normal.

Anyone 60 or younger should get 1,000 international units (IU) per day. Up that amount to 1,200 IU daily if you’re over 60 years of age. You’ve got three choices for reaping the benefits of vitamin D: sunlight, food and a supplement.