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Is vitamin D the new cure-all?
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Best way to get your vitamin D is sunshine (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Finally, it looks as though we are going to have a sunny weekend in Philadelphia. So get out there and get your vitamin D.
A recent study from the Boston Medical Center links vitamin D deficiency with higher rates of risk for caesarian section deliveries. This is just the latest is a series of findings suggesting that vitamin D prevents or cures everything from obesity to osteoporosis. Rickets, once a major health concern in the U.S., has become rare since the 1930’s, when milk began to be fortified with vitamin D. Can vitamin D do for cancer, what it’s done for rickets? A growing number of experts are convinced.
A study from Creighton University School of Medicine in Nebraska in 2007 concluded that supplementing with calcium and vitamin D reduced the risk of cancer (including breast, colon and skin cancers) by 77%. Many other studies have linked vitamin D deficiency with diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, auto-immune diseases, Parkinson’s disease, depression and autism.
Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin which we (and most plants and animals) produce through exposure to the sun. Its major function in the body is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorous.
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The best way to get your vitamin D is through 10-15 minutes of exposure to the summer sun per day. This means actually peeling down and getting a good area of skin exposed without sunscreen since that blocks most vitamin D production.
Aside from sun exposure, the natural food sources for vitamin D include fatty fish (salmon, mackerel and sardines), liver and eggs. Milk, cereals and other processed grains are often fortified with vitamin D. However, most Americans don’t (or won’t) eat a sufficient quantity of those D-rich foods to get the minimum daily requirement.
What about in the winter? Anyone in the Philadelphia area and other parts of the northern hemisphere will have to either find a good UVB tanning bed or take vitamin B supplements.
The government’s recommended daily allowance for vitamin D is 400 units, which is only the amount necessary to avoid rickets but not enough to optimize health benefits. For that, Dr. Mark Hyman recommends a maintenance dosage of 2,000 to 4,000 units. However, if you think you need more, get tested by a doctor before increasing dosages.
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