I didn't know I was lacking in Vitamin D until I collapsed at work

Twenty-three-year-old Saskia Reeves-Priestley was at activity whenever she abruptly collapsed.

"I fair felt really dizzy, really nauseous, was having bosom palpitations and was really hot," she says.

Saskia, a particular instructional needs teacher, was a eager goalkeeper who played football four times a week and felt fit and healthy. While her symptoms are not immediately connected to vitamin D deficiency - she realised item was wrong.

Blood tests afterward showed her flat was so low - it was "next to nothing".

According to data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, final twelvemonth nearly a fourth of 11- to 18-year-olds were categorized as deficient.

Vitamin D can arrive from our diet, in foods specified as oily seafood and meat, or supplements.

But most is made by our build whenever UV ray in sunlight hits the skin. Lower levels of sunlight - depending on anywhere in the earth you live or the period of twelvemonth - decrease the body's capability to create it.

Covering parts of the build and wearing sunscreen additionally has an effect - notwithstanding their protective advantages.

Those alongside darker skin need visibility to stronger ray to create the identical amount of vitamin D as lighter skin.

Doctors don't routinely recommendation lifeblood tests to inspect for vitamin D deficiency, but volition recommendation a supplement if a tolerant is concerned they power be elevated risk.

What are the symptoms - and their regular impact?

Vitamin D deficiency is connected to the skeletal sickness rickets in babies and infants. In adults it causes a akin weakening of the skeletal called osteomalacia.

"They call it the silent disease," says Dr Suma Uday, a paediatric endocrinologist who wants to lift awareness of the problem.

She warns that vitamin D deficiency in young group and adults is difficult to place and can be missed or misdiagnosed. Symptoms contain fatigue and shared and skeletal pain.

Uday says: "It's basically silently dining distant at the bones, leaving them softened and prone to breaks."

Amaka was in the center of making meal at her university home in Liverpool whenever she started shaking.

"I couldn't really see in forefront of me," she says. Her housemate took her to A&E - afterward she too would be diagnosed as vitamin D deficient.

Other than emotion tired, she says she had no symptoms: "I'm a 21-year-old student. I've got activity and uni - I'm continually emotion tired."

She remembers her mother suffering from low vitamin D but says she did not realise it could happen to her.

After taking supplements, Amaka feels a lot better, but she is concerned in case it happens again. "It was scary and I don't desire to cognition that again."

Lifelong deficit in girls

Uday joins another clinicians and academics who have cast a collection - ACT NOW Vitamin D - calling for the threshold at which you are classified as deficient to be raised.

She says that would "catch" additional group alongside low vitamin D and provision a additional exact image of how general the matter is. It would additionally average they can treat the deficiency earlier, she says.

Uday warns of "a lifelong deficit" in women - in adolescence, afterward pregnancy, and afterward the newborn is affected.

"If you don't accurate it from the extremely beginning," she says, "this is going to power multiple generations."

"It's shocking," says Prof Martin Hewison, from the University of Birmingham.

He tells me that notwithstanding being 100 years on from the finding of vitamin D "rickets hasn't gone away".

"If we have rickets in the community, there are going to be many additional group who are vitamin D deficient."

He says the authorities should appearance into wider fortification of food in which vitamins are added to foods during production. Countries akin Canada and Sweden have mandatory policies.

In the UK, several foods specified as dawn meal cereals and spreads are already fortified alongside vitamin D, but it is voluntary.

During the winter months, group commencement to endure their vitamin D levels.

"We power have to obtain that for certain groups vitamin D supplementation is a matter of course," says Hewison.

Saskia is now taking vitamin D supplements regularly - and is rear in goal.

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