Get More Sunshine in Your Life

Posted By elissa on Dec 22, 2009 | 1 comment

Failing that, take a vitamin D supplement.

It’s a little unusual to see mainstream docs actually recommending supps, but the evidence in favor of supplementing with vitamin D is piling up.  As the latest Harvard Heart Letter explains:

Heart disease. Falls and broken bones. Breast and prostate cancer. Depression and memory loss. These problems seem to have nothing in common, except that they are leading causes of faltering health and death. Exciting research suggests there is a link — too little vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin, can contribute to all of these.

Millions of Americans, especially older ones, don’t have enough vitamin D in circulation. Current national recommendations for daily vitamin D intake — 400 international units (IU) for those aged 51 to 70 and 600 IU for those older than 70 — may not be high enough to reverse this trend.

…Experts have defined three categories for vitamin D status: deficient, less than 20 nanograms of 25-hydroxyvitamin D per milliliter of blood (ng/mL); insufficient, from 20 to 30 ng/mL; and sufficient, above 30 ng/mL.

Surveys suggest that at least one-third of American adults, and 75% of adults with cardiovascular disease, fall into the deficient category.

It’s tough to get sufficient vitamin D from diet alone.  And – unless you live in Florida (or some other locale with sunshine year-round), your body may be deprived of the opportunity to make it for long stretches of time.  Thus, it’s best to take a supp.  The Heart Letter suggests:

Supplements are the simplest, safest way to get vitamin D. Multivitamins usually contain 400 IU of vitamin D. Some calcium supplements come with added vitamin D. You can also buy vitamin D by itself. Getting 800 to 1,000 IU from supplements is a good goal.

It makes sense to ask your doctor to test your vitamin D level, and to take a supplement if it is in the deficient or insufficient range. To check your vitamin D status yourself, join Grassroots Health (www.grassrootshealth.org), a nonprofit organization that focuses on vitamin D. For a $40 membership fee, you’ll get information on vitamin D and a home test kit.

It should be noted that some researchers (such as Robert Heaney and Reinhold Vieth) are calling for even higher intakes: ~2,000 IU/day.  Since vitamin D toxicity is virtually unknown in healthy people at intakes < 10,000 IU/day, there’s a significant margin of safety.