Vitamin D Benefits For Fertility, Pregnancy & Overall Health

Unless you live in the tropics year-round or take supplements proactively, chances are you aren’t getting enough vitamin D. And despite widespread educational campaigns to raise awareness, vitamin D deficiency has persisted to the point that most forward-thinking doctors recommend testing your levels annually.
And for nearly everyone over 30, supplementation is indicated. However, as a functional medicine doctor (and a busy mother of three), I recommend my patients get their vitamin D levels checked more frequently and as early in their adult lives as possible. Why? Because optimal vitamin D levels are crucial to nearly every single bodily function, including successful conception―for men and women―and maintaining a healthy pregnancy. Plus, optimizing your vitamin D levels sooner rather than later can prevent a slew of modern chronic ailments from manifesting later in life.

What is vitamin D?

While its name is slightly misleading, vitamin D is both a vitamin and a hormone essential for healthy bodily function. Often nicknamed "the sunshine vitamin," vitamin D mostly enters our bodies via the sun, which is absorbed by our skin and converted to a usable form by cholesterol. You can get some vitamin D from specific foods, but the majority comes from good old-fashioned sunshine.

While all nutrients play a crucial, symbiotic role in maintaining health, vitamin D is especially important as it is essential for nearly every single bodily system and function including the musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, renal, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems.

It’s even essential for healthy genetics and gene expression. Vitamin D has been shown to be responsible for up to 3 percent of what’s known as "gene transcription," the process in which your inherited genes are expressed or activated. In other words, vitamin D plays one of the most essential roles in nourishing your body, protecting your genes, preventing acute and chronic disease, and maintaining your overall health.

2.How vitamin D supercharges your health and prevents disease?

While the research on vitamin D, fertility, and conception is up-and-coming, the studies that have been done are promising. For example, it’s been shown that vitamin D supplementation can increase a couple's chances of conceiving when using IVF, and new research suggests vitamin D supplementation may increase fertility and sperm count in men.

Plus, given what we now know about how vitamin D levels affect your immunity, inflammatory levels, and overall health, I wager we’ll be seeing many more exciting studies published in the coming years. For now, it seems prudent for future fathers (that’s you, guys) to get serious about their vitamin D levels to enhance their chances of a speedy conception.

3.Vitamin D and pregnancy.

Now that we’ve got dads on board with vitamin D optimization, it’s time to move on to the moms. While vitamin D optimization will benefit women at any time in their life, it’s absolutely essential you keep on top of your levels before getting pregnant (ideally) and definitely during and after pregnancy.

Significant evidence shows that vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy increases your risk of anemia, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, bacterial vaginosis, and unplanned caesarean birth. For baby, a variety of studies have shown suboptimal vitamin D levels can negatively affect an unborn child’s health in a number of ways including lower birth weight, tooth enamel defects, lowered cognitive function, and increased risk of obesity.

If that isn’t enough to turn your head, studies show you can reduce your baby's risk of asthma by 40 percent by increasing your intake of vitamin D. Vitamin D also plays a key role in the nutritional quality of your breast milk. Therefore, if you’re supplementing for two, I tend to recommend a higher-dose supplementation for breastfeeding mothers, often 5,000 IUs daily and up. Talk to your doctor or health care practitioner about what’s best for you.

4.Vitamin D and hormone and thyroid health.

The thyroid is one of the most powerful glands in your body, regulating everything from metabolism and body temperature to hormonal balance and sleep patterns. It’s also a key player in fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum recovery. Therefore, if you want to increase your chances of a healthy conception, pregnancy, and postpartum period, protecting your thyroid is key.

Beyond pregnancy, caring for your thyroid will help you maintain a healthy weight, mood, sleep cycle, immunity, and energy levels and keep your hair, skin, and nails youthful and strong. Vitamin D plays a crucial role in thyroid health as it regulates the production of thyroid hormones, which help protect you from thyroid diseases.

Further studies have shown low levels of vitamin D levels are associated with chronic thyroid conditions like autoimmune thyroid disease such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Grave's disease. I mention this in the context of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum health because many of the patients I see with thyroid insufficiencies are mothers.

The reason is pregnancy, birth, and caring for a new baby require an increased amount of stress hormones, sleep deprivation, and stamina. This puts a huge strain on the body’s hormonal balance and nutrient reserves, which often results in a compromised thyroid and adrenals. Ladies, if I could give you one piece of preventive advice for a healthy postpartum recovery it would be to take care of your thyroid before, during, and after your pregnancy―and getting enough vitamin D is a great place to start.