Saturday, August 15, 2009

The Epidemic of Vitamin D Deficiency

Much has been written about Vitamin D recently. I am frequent reader of the Mercola website and remember reading about it years ago but basically ignored it as I was taking Centrum multivitamins (400 IU of vitamin D) and assumed I was covered. Years later, I moved to the Costco brand of multi-vitamins and was beginning to wonder if I was meeting the minimums being discussed by Vitamin experts. Some were throwing out numbers like 2,000-5,000 IUs a day. So I began taking 1,000 IUs in addition to the multi (1,400 per day). This went on for about 3 months and then I bought a new batch of Costco's vitamins and found they upped the D to 1,000 in their vitamins. This mean that I was taking 2,000 IU a day.

That went on for about 1-2 months. Just last week I got my Vitamin D levels checked with a 25-hydroxyvitamin D test. My levels, I assumed might be sky high, but one thing was sure...they wouldn't be low.

The recommended range was from 30-80 ng/ml. I came in at 42 (less than 30 is a deficiency). My levels were actually on the low side, after months of taking ~1,500 - 2,000 IUs a day.

What I'm wondering is, how on earth can most people, who spend their days under fluorescent lamps and don't take vitamins.....getting any at all?

The Vitamin D Council website has an interesting article on Autism and Vitamin D. It draws parallels between the sudden widespread deficiency and the sudden rise in Autism (maybe breast cancer too?). It's important to remember that Coppertone first introduced UVA/UVB blocking sunscreen only 24 years ago in 1985.

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