Vitamin D is essential in our fight against diseases

If the conditions are right, a healthy body can create all the vitamin D that it needs all on its own.

Some vitamin D occurs naturally in foods such as eggs and oily fish. Wild salmon offers a lot; farmed salmon often little. Some vitamin D is added to certain foods, especially milk, during the manufacturing process.

Your body creates vitamin D when cholesterol in the skin is exposed to the sun in spring, summer and fall. An hour per week on the face and arms might do it, but not if you have dark skin. People with naturally dark skin need up to five or 10 times the amount of sun that fair-skinned people need in order to get the same benefits.

Vitamin D is essential for your ability to make use of calcium and phosphorus. Without a sufficient amount of it, people develop rickets, a disease that causes bones to become soft and weak, and osteoporosis. Recent research shows a much wider role for vitamin D than was previously perceived.

Vitamin D may regulate more than 200 genes. Very high (but safe) levels of vitamin D in the blood have been linked with reduced occurrence of breast and other cancers, while low levels are associated with higher susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, diabetes and depression.

Vitamin D plays a significant role in hypertension, in immune system functioning and in pre-birth brain development.

For the population as a whole, the levels of this vitamin in our bodies are declining. More use of sunscreen, less time in the sun and an aging population may be the factors responsible for this change.

In an April 2009 professional seminar, Dr. Jeffrey Bland of Metagenics Inc. said that in one group of 40 mother-infant pairs tested at birth, 76 percent of the mothers and 81 percent of the infants had significantly low blood levels of this vitamin.

The official recommended daily intake is 400 units, but that is only enough to prevent rickets.

A qualified practitioner may prescribe up to 10,000 units a day to remedy a deficiency, but it would be dangerous to take this amount without supervision.

Canadian regulations limit your off-the-shelf capsule to 1,000 units, and that may well be a sensible caution for self-dosing. Toxicity from too much vitamin D is possible but very unusual. The levels of vitamin D found in foods are not nearly high enough for that. Only long-term supplements at a very excessive level (over 10,000 units) would pose a danger.

Ask your family practitioner to check your vitamin D level when you get your routine tests done, if he or she isn’t doing so already.



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