My doctor’s office recently called with the results of blood work from my annual checkup. They said my vitamin D level was very low. Could this be the reason I always feel so tired? Maybe this is why my psoriasis has been out of control for the past few months. The doctor’s recommendation was to start taking 2000 IU of vitamin D every day but I’ve been taking 5000 IU every day. So now what do I do? And why is vitamin D so important anyway?
I believe it’s important to get as many nutrients as we can from whole unprocessed food and then add in high quality supplements to fill in the gaps. So what can you eat to help increase your vitamin D levels? Cod liver oil is a fantastic source (it’s really not as bad as you think!) as well as salmon, sardines, cheese and eggs. Fortified milk is OK too as long as it’s fortified with D3 and preferably organic from grass-fed pastured cows. Mushrooms are also a great source of vitamin D if you’re vegan or vegetarian or just not into fish, eggs and dairy.
So I did a little research (OK, it was actually a lot of research) into vitamin D and I found a lot of great information that I’ve tried to summarize below. Here’s what I found out…
Vitamin D, also called the “sunshine vitamin” because our bodies manufacture it when our skin is exposed to the sun’s rays, has been proven to be a critical requirement for good health. During the winter months, if you live just about anywhere north of Atlanta, Georgia USA it’s nearly impossible to get enough sun exposure for our bodies to begin the process of making vitamin D.
These days we work inside all day long, rarely going outside for even a few minutes, and we continually receive the message that being out in the sun without protection is going to give us cancer and wrinkles. When we do go outside we cover up as much skin as we possibly can with hats and long sleeves and makeup and creams with sunscreen. Lengthy exposure to the sun for hours on end, like we used to do before we knew better, is not a good idea. But, exposing your skin to the sun for 20 or 30 minutes a day to initiate your body’s vitamin D manufacturing process probably is a good idea.
Think about it, if vitamin D is so critical to good health and our bodies naturally make vitamin D when exposed to the sun, doesn’t it make sense that a little bit of strategic sun exposure is probably a good thing?
To confuse matters even more vitamin D isn’t really a vitamin, it’s a hormone. Most of us don’t know as much about our hormones as we do about vitamins and other supplements but we do know that hormones are important to gene expression, and the proper functioning and general well-being of our bodies. So what do we do to ensure optimal vitamin D levels? Here’s what the Vitamin D Council has to say…
“The most accurate way to measure how much vitamin D is in your body is the 25-hydroxy vitamin D blood test. A level of 20 nanograms/milliliter to 50 ng/mL is considered adequate for healthy people. A level less than 12 ng/mL indicates vitamin D deficiency”.
They go on to recommend that most adults get 5000 IU daily in order to achieve optimal levels of Vitamin D.
One of the most important things I discovered is that the form of vitamin D we take is extremely important. We need to be taking a vitamin D3 supplement which is the natural form of vitamin D created when our skin is exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D2 is synthetically produced by irradiating a mold compound and is not absorbed as well as vitamin D3. This means you’ll have a harder time getting your vitamin D levels into the range required to maintain optimal health if you’re taking D2 instead of D3.
But the most important thing I discovered is that it’s the combination of vitamin D3 + vitamin K that works together most effectively and provides the greatest health benefits. This could be a good part of the reason that the 5000 IU of vitamin D I had been taking wasn’t bringing my vitamin D levels up to a normal range. It was a liquid D with no Vitamin K and there was no way to know what the potency of the liquid in the bottle really was.
So don’t wait too long to get your vitamin D levels checked, it’s likely that you’re deficient and don’t even know it. Current research shows that much of the world’s population is vitamin D deficient. If you’re feeling exhausted all the time and don’t know why it might be due to low vitamin D levels. Being tired all the time is one of the symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency.
If you find you do need to supplement with vitamin D be sure you’re taking a high quality, highly absorb-able Vitamin D3 + K supplement. After weight loss surgery several years ago and the nutrient deficiencies that followed, I needed to find supplements that dissolved quickly and were well absorbed rather than just being eliminated from my body before doing their job. I finally found a company that manufactures and sells pharmaceutical grade supplements that worked better than any supplement I’d ever taken in the past. The right supplements can be the difference between dragging through your day or accomplishing all the things you need to get done with energy to spare. If you want to ask me about the supplements I take or if you have questions about weight loss or weight loss surgery contact me here.
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