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Bob Peterson from Minnesota writes this, the winters where I live can be really long, and
really I'm concerned about my vitamin D intake, what should I do? Does it really make a difference?
Don't I get enough vitamin D from dairy? What's the big deal about vitamin D? You know vitamin
D is actually become a focus of research intensely in the last several years, and there's really
an explosion of research so what we understand about this vitamin is that actually acts more
like a hormone, so it has so many different interactions in our body in fact it's been
found to stimulate 200 different genes that are involved with cancer growth and hundreds
of other different genes as well that are involved with chronic diseases. So now what
we're finding is that people that are low in vitamin D witch is actually kind of a chronic
condition and very common because we're not out in the sun manufacturing it like we did
in the past hundreds of years ago. So what we're finding is that people that are low
in vitamin D that they have a much higher incidence of a variety of different kinds
of cancers, particularly breast, prostate, and colon cancer, and even things like multiple
scleroses, so many different kinds of chronic diseases so vitamin D is something that's
extremely fundamental to our health. Well, so Bob Peterson's from Minnesota he can't
go out and get a lot of sunshine in the winter months, so what should he do? You know, move!
Right? Who would live in Minnesota? I'm laughing because you do right? So no that actually
practically, most people are not going to get enough sunshine because they are indoors
working and they can't practically be outside and get enough of the vitamin D. So taking
vitamin D supplements is absolutely crucial. Now how much you should take is an area where
it is very individual so we find that what we recommended before which was 400 international
units is way too low for good health, and in fact it's more in the realm of about 2,000
international units a day. Now if you're sick, or if you have really low levels, and the
only way to be able to tell that is to go to your doctor and have it checked. Then you
may need to take a lot more than that to begin with, but you don't want to actually sustain
those very high levels because vitamin D is called a fat soluble vitamin, so what that
means is it stores in our fat cells, and so you can check your blood levels and you don't
really know how much is in your fat cells so you can actually get toxic on vitamin D
so again initially if your levels are very low it is a good idea to take more larger
dosages of it working with your doctor and then probably backing off to about 2,000 IU
a day. So if I take somewhere between 400-2,000 I'm not going to take too much of it, is that
what you're saying? No you wont and I would definitely encourage more in the realm of
2,000 because that's what the research is now showing as a healthier level. So I just
have one other question, how about tanning beds, can I just get some vitamin D from tanning
beds? We don't recommend them. So the problem is tanning beds aren't really regulated and
so they're a definitely has been a higher instances of skin cancer associated with tanning
beds so I'm not a proponent of doing tanning beds. It's much better to get your natural
sunlight and we used to recommend that you not go out in the sun at all in mid day, and
now we've changed that which we doctors do once we get some more information about it.
But about 15-20 minutes of sunlight is the best time in mid day to make your vitamin
D. So if I understand you correctly it would be best to get the vitamin D from sunlight,
but if you live in Minnesota or some other really northern climate state you can take
a ingestible vitamin D and it's going to be just as good for you? Right yeah. Well thank
you very much Doctor Horner and sharing your views on vitamin D. If you have a question
about this topic or any other, just click on the link below, we would love to hear from
you.