Vitamin D-eee-licious!!

* This posting is dedicated to my friend Erin, who lives in Juneau, Alaska.

Vitamin D is on the tips of everyone's tongues these days. Its role in the human body as a hormone is vast and affects everything from growth and development and neurological health to the prevention of many cancers and possibly type two diabetes!

(Its marketing range is enormous, industry LOVES all the attention to yet another miracle nutrient.)

The Institute of Medicine's recommendations for adequate intake (AI) for vitamin D is 200 international units (IU) for everyone under 50 years of age, 400 IU for ages 51-70, and 600 IU for person's 71 years of age and more.

And the new recommendations that will be out any day now will be even higher; many clinicians already recommend 2,000 IU daily as a maintenance dose, up to 50,000 units once per week for 8 weeks to treat deficiency.

Anyways, this information is widely available and frankly, pretty dry. What I would like to share with you, lovely reader, is a sense of empowerment that you CAN meet your needs without a pill! But first, a couple of provocative questions...

How did we survive BEFORE vitamin D supplementation?

1. Vitamin D is synthesized in our skin from a reaction between UVB radiation and the cholesterol in our skin at a whopping 10,000 UI per 10 minutes of sunlight exposure!

In Juneau, the only months this is possible is April through September, and in the hours of 11 am to maybe 4 pm. Farther north, the window of time shrinks further.

2. Vitamin D from our food is found in the same organs and tissues that they would be found in human organs and tissues so an understanding of where vitamin D hangs out in our bodies will paint a picture of dietary sources:

• It is synthesized in the skin - traditional diets included the skin of animals
• It is transported from the skin or intestines to the liver - traditional diets included livers
• It is transported from the liver to the kidney - traditional diets included kidneys
• It is transported via the blood - some traditional diets included blood
• It is stored in fat - traditional diets did not shy away from animal fats!

So why is vitamin D such a big deal these days?

1. Vitamin D from the sun is blocked by about 95% from even very low SPF sun screen. The same precautionary measure that decreases skin cancer risk, increases the risk for vitamin D deficiency.

Babies are swaddled up and sun protected like never before in history. Which justifies the recommendations for all breastfed babies to be supplemented with vitamin D.

We, as Americans, are going less outside. Especially kids, who need the vitamin D for growth and development and older adults, who need the vitamin D for bone health.

2. Vitamin D from food is most commonly consumed in it's enriched sources: milk, juice, and cereals. While this is important, it is really very sad.

You see, the traditional sources of vitamin D have become foods that are rarely or never eaten by the general public (organs and wild fish), or are the same foods that have been vilified by the media and medical world as "bad" foods (lard, butter, chicken skin) due to the misinformation of the lipid hypothesis.

Seal Oil 8 IU per oz

Whale Oil 63 IU per oz

Wild Salmon 265 IU per oz

Sardines 134 IU per oz

Shrimp 9 IU per Shrimp

Butter 8 IU per Tbsp

Egg 18 IU per Egg

Cod Liver Oil 1350 IU per Tbsp

(Data obtained from websites listed in links below, note that the quantity of all nutrients of food are variable depending on species, age of animal, region, and season.)

Unfortunately, many of the foods that likely contain vitamin D (liver, kidney, chicken skin, and lard) do not have data for vitamin D content in the national nutrient database. But you get the idea...

The health campaigns of the eighties pushed for low fat diets that changed the way that Americans regard traditional fats. Instead of using butter, we used margarine. Instead of using lard, we used Crisco. Not only did this change hurt us because of synthetic trans fatty acids reeking havoc on our arteries, also it decreased the amount of vitamin D in our diet. Vegetable oils, while wonderful, are devoid of vitamin D.

Along with the changes in physical activity and sun exposure, decreased vitamin D in the diet contributed to what researchers feel is an epidemic in low vitamin D levels in this country - and all the health problems associated with it.

And we have lost the trust in ourselves and our bodies. Deep down I believe we know what is good for us, and if we weren't so concerned about all this nutrition jumbo-mumbo and just listened, really listened, to what our body was telling us, we would choose the right balance of food to get all the nutrients we need to live long, satisfying lives.

Photo: Sardines and Pasta, aka: Cleaning-out-the-Pantry Surprise!

And now for something completely theoretical...

The huge discrepancy between how much vitamin D that can be synthesized in our skin by the sun in 10 minutes and how much can be eaten in one day through diet leads me to theorize that there may be something to the seasonality of dosing of vitamin D that is adaptive to humans.

(This theory led one of my preceptors during my internship to state her sense of "worry" for me as an almost-dietitian who was supposed to spout nothing but "fact" from peer reviewed journal articles... But I'm sorry, scientific fact follows theory, and I refuse to silence my instinctive mind.)

In conclusion:

Vitamin D is the new hit vitamin, and research in the area is young. It is so young, that is hardly even controversial yet! In all my reading about vitamin D, I have only really found one critical, well cited opinion piece that raises some doubt to the miracle of vitamin D supplementation. Link provided below.

So, do you feel empowered to make a choice?! To supplement or not to supplement vitamin D? There is a huge body of evidence to support supplementation of vitamin D, however, for those of you who choose not to, there are options to increase your intake through diet, as our ancestors did. The most whole foods vitamin D supplement that you could choose would be cod liver oil, with has been used historically and has many health benefits associated with it!

(Always buy supplements from top quality, reputable companies that test for contaminants. The liver of animals is super-duper nutritious, but the liver is also the detoxifying organ, therefore unhealthy animals have very unhealthy livers.)

Useful vitamin D links:

Article: Widespread vitamin D supplementation questioned

Linus Pauling Institute on vitamin D

National Institute of Health fact sheet on vitamin D

Nutrition Database