Vitamin D activation is necessary for the stored form of vitamin D to become available to the body.  Did you know that the vitamin D within you is stored in its inactive form.  Until it is activated, it cannot be properly utilized.   This means you could have plenty of vitamin D in its inactivated form but unless you have good reserves of a certain nutrient, the vitamin will stay inactivated and unavailable.

What is that activating nutrient?  It is magnesium.  Sufficient levels of magnesium are necessary for the metabolization of Vitamin D from the inactive to the active form.  If your magnesium levels are low, your vitamin D will not be useful.   What’s more it could prove to be unsafe.

A new study published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association found that low magnesium levels make vitamin D ineffective. “People are taking Vitamin D supplements but don’t realize how it gets metabolized. Without magnesium, Vitamin D is not really useful or safe,” says study co-author Mohammed S. Razzaque, MBBS, PhD, a professor of pathology at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Vitamin D Activation – a little known fact – Magnesium and Health