The Importance of Vitamin D

Just in the last few years there has been a growing awareness of the importance of vitamin D. Modern living has removed us from the daily exposure to vitamin D our ancestors once had; as they walked along the Savannas foraging for food. In today's world, key sunlight hours are spent in doors, often in an office; depriving us of our daily dose of vitamin D. The recent years have also seen a rise in the use of sunscreen. Unfortunately, while these sunscreens may protect us from the risk of skin cancer, they also increase our risk of certain diseases attributed to a loss of vitamin D in our systems. These diseases include; a greater risk for breast and colon cancer, I am also beginning to see a large number of patients with skin diseases, like psoriasis. These individuals have also tested at dangerously low levels of vitamin D.
While synthetic Vitamin D can be taken orally, I feel that sun exposure is still the most natural and effective way to allow the body to produce this essential nutrient. While I do not recommend large hours of sun bathing, I do think brief periods of sun exposure, when the sun is highest, can be beneficial, perhaps for only 20 minutes a day. In Oregon and Washington, where I went to school, the lack of sun light became a real challenge, so every moment that the students could steal away to harness rays during sunny days was appreciated, it also helped relieve many people of seasonal effective disorder, a disease we now feel may be the result of lowered vitamin D in the system.
While in the past the RDA recommended a mere 400IU units a day of vitamin D to maintain health, most health care practitioners today feel these levels are simply too low. If your vitamin D levels are too low, your doctor may recommend you take as much as 50,000IU doses once a week for several weeks until your levels increase. When I prescribe vitamin D, I do so with a good fish oil, or better, suspended in fish oil. This is because it is a fat soluble vitamin, and can be better absorbed this way. I place people on a minimum dose of 1000IU a day, but for those individuals with low Vitamin D levels in their systems, I may recommend levels as high as 5000 IU a day.
I believe we have only begun to discover the importance of this nutrient in our bodies. Furthermore, I believe that modern living, while creating many modern conveniences and benifits, has also created new challenges for our bodies; challenges that our ancestors did not experience when they lived closer to the natural world.