Should you be taking Vitamin D?
Question: should you take vitamin D? Answer: yes. End of blog. Let me explain... Here's what I think you need to know about vitamin D, not too little, not too much, just right. Some years ago, when the data began to emerge on how important vitamin D was to human health, I started doing blood tests on teenagers in my practice. But I stopped pretty quickly. Almost everyone was deficient. How can that be? These are "normal" young people. First reason: we don't spend enough time in the sun. Adults working indoors, kids in schools, in fact anyone living north of a latitude that roughly passes through Atlanta, GA, cannot get enough sunlight exposure year round to avoid vitamin D deficiency. Sunlight is the very best way to make vitamin D, because the skin converts other steroid compounds in the body to vitamin D on exposure to the UV rays in sunlight. Second reason: it's hard to get vitamin D from foods. Without added supplementati...