{"id":818297,"date":"2026-10-30T04:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T04:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818297\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T04:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T04:44:15","slug":"i-didnt-know-when-i-collapsed-at-work-it-was-low-vitamin-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818297\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn’t know when I collapsed at work – it was low vitamin D"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-three-year-old Saskia Reeves-Priestley was at work when she suddenly collapsed.<\/p>\n

“I just felt really dizzy, really nauseous, was having heart palpitations and was really hot,” she says.<\/p>\n

There had been no prior warning. Saskia, a special educational needs teacher, was a keen goalkeeper who played football four times a week and felt fit and healthy.<\/p>\n

She would later be diagnosed as vitamin D-deficient \u2013 blood tests showed her levels were “next to nothing”.<\/p>\n

In the UK, low vitamin rates are increasing in some age groups, external<\/a> – particularly in girls and young women.<\/p>\n

According to data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, last year nearly a quarter of 11- to 18-year-olds were classed as deficient.<\/p>\n

Vitamin D can come from our diet, in foods such as oily fish and meat, or supplements. <\/p>\n

But most is made by our body when UV light in sunlight hits the skin. Lower levels of sunlight – depending on where in the world you live or the time of year – decrease the body’s ability to produce it.<\/p>\n

Covering parts of the body and wearing sunscreen also has an impact – despite their protective advantages.<\/p>\n

Those with darker skin need exposure to stronger light to produce the same amount of vitamin D as lighter skin.<\/p>\n

Doctors don’t routinely offer blood tests to check for vitamin D deficiency, but will offer a supplement if a patient is concerned they might be high risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-three-year-old Saskia Reeves-Priestley was at work when she suddenly collapsed. “I just felt really dizzy, really nauseous, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}