Supplementation Tip: Vitamin D

Get some sun. It's beautiful and good for you.

Vitamin D is essential for strong bones because it helps the body use calcium from the diet. Traditionally, vitamin D deficiency has been associated with rickets, a disease in which the bone tissue doesn't properly mineralize, leading to soft bones and skeletal deformities. But increasingly, research is revealing the importance of vitamin D in protecting against a host of health problems.¹

Symptoms of bone pain and muscle weakness can mean you have a vitamin D deficiency. However, for many people, the symptoms are subtle. Yet even without symptoms, too little vitamin D can pose health risks. Low blood levels of the vitamin have been associated with the following:  increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment in older adults, severe asthma in children, and cancer¹

Causes of Vitamin D Deficiency

Vitamin D deficiency can occur for a number of reasons:

You don't consume the recommended levels of the vitamin over time. This is likely if you follow a strict vegetarian diet, because most of the natural sources are animal-based, including fish and fish oils, egg yolks, and beef liver.

Your exposure to sunlight is limited. Because the body makes vitamin D when your skin is exposed to sunlight, you may be at risk of deficiency if you are homebound, live in northern latitudes, wear long robes or head coverings for religious reasons, or have an occupation that prevents sun exposure.

You have dark skin. The pigment melanin reduces the skin's ability to make vitamin D in response to sunlight exposure. Some studies show that older adults with darker skin are at high risk of vitamin D deficiency.

Your kidneys cannot convert vitamin D to its active form. As people age their kidneys are less able to convert vitamin D to its active form, thus increasing their risk of vitamin D deficiency.

Your digestive tract cannot adequately absorb vitamin D. Certain medical problems, including Crohn's disease, cystic fibrosis, and celiac disease, can affect your intestine's ability to absorb vitamin D from the food you eat.

You are obese. Vitamin D is extracted from the blood by fat cells, altering its release into the circulation. People with a body mass index of 30 or greater often have low blood levels of vitamin D.¹

Sun or Supplementation?

For us humans, getting vitamin D from sunlight is the clear winner. We are basically hairless, upright apes for a reason, with hefty D3 requirements, and before oral supplements appeared, dietary vitamin D was not a very reliable source. We had to get it from the sun. Today, we’re still those same hairless, upright apes (albeit with different fashion trends and hygiene sensibilities), and we can still obtain vitamin D from UV-B radiation. Personally, I prefer getting my D3 from sunlight, simply because it’s enjoyable to spend time in the sun and it’s an effortless way to get something that’s critical to my health. But I don’t think it’s necessarily “better” than getting it through supplements. Nature’s way is quite often better, or at least more congruent with how we’re “intended” to work, but that doesn’t always preclude the effectiveness of modern methods.²

Take a good D3 supplement if you can’t get real sunlight. As long as you don’t go overboard on the dosage, you’re good to go. If it’s not in an oil-based capsule, just take it with a bit of fatty food (not a stretch for an Primal eater). It travels the same pathway and results in the same benefits. It’s always easier to just let nature take its course, but it’s not always realistic.  A good general rule is 4000 IU per day supplemented.2

Sources:

1) http://www.webmd.com/diet/vitamin-d-deficiency

2) http://www.marksdailyapple.com/vitamin-d-sun-exposure-supplementation-and-doses/

3) Image: http://thatisthestuff.com/2011/03/dont-let-the-sun-go-down-on-me/