Vitamin D is a key vitamin that is required by the body, it promotes absorption of calcium from the gastrointestinal tract and helps with maintaining healthy bones. Your body can only absorb calcium, the primary component of bone, when vitamin D is present. Vitamin D also regulates many other cellular functions in your body. Its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and neuroprotective properties support immune health, muscle function and brain cell activity.
Currently I don’t take any supplements as I am relatively healthy and try and get most of my vitamins and minerals from mainly food sources. We require most of them in such small quantities that we can end up spending a lot on multivitamins that we don’t really need.However with Vitamin D it is a slightly different story, although we can get some of the vitamin through foods, it is difficult to get enough through diet alone. We get most of our Vitamin D through sunlight, as our body makes vitamin D when direct sunlight converts a chemical in your skin into an active form of the vitamin (calciferol).
The amount of vitamin D your skin makes depends on many factors, including the time of day, season, latitude and your skin pigmentation. Depending on where you live and your lifestyle, vitamin D production might decrease or be completely absent during the winter months. Sunscreen, while important to prevent skin cancer, also can decrease vitamin D production.
Public Health England (PHE) has advised that nearly everyone in the UK should take a 10 mcg (400 IU) supplement of vitamin D in the Autumn and Winter months, as there is not enough sunlight at this time of year for sufficient production of vitamin D. (Note there is a difference for babies and for people who have very little exposure to the sun).
Vitamin D is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide. Around one-quarter of the UK population is deficient in vitamin D, rising to around one-third in the winter months.
There is also new research showing that taking Vitamin D by oral spray is just effective as in tablet form.
I take Vitamin D3 rather than D2 supplement from October to March (Most studies show that vitamin D3 is more effective than vitamin D2 at raising blood levels of calcifediol). Also it is important to check you are not taking too high a dose as this can also be detrimental as too much calcium can build up in the body. I stick to the recommended 10mcg per day during the Winter months.
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