Do you get enough Vitamin D?

Vitamin D plays a big role in helping your body absorb calcium, maintaining bone density, and preventing osteoporosis. But that's not all! New research also shows it may help protect against chronic diseases including cancer, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and even autoimmune diseases.

Unfortunately, many adults have low levels of vitamin D in their blood. Vitamin D is hard to put into your diet because it's rarely found in food, and in most cases, when it is found in food, it's added. For example, vitamin D is added to some milk. Most of the vitamin D we absorb is either from multivitamins or is from sun exposure.

Vitamin D is often called the sunshine vitamin because our bodies produce it naturally after our skin is exposed to direct, unprotected sunlight. This means without sun block and not through windows. However, many factors can hinder your body's ability to produce vitamin D; the farther you live from the equator, cloud cover and air pollution all diminish vitamin D production. Other factors such as age and skin color can affect a person's ability to naturally produce vitamin D.

Most people living in the South can get enough vitamin D by exposing the skin on their arms and face in the sun for about 10 to 15 minutes a few times a week. However, if the person's skin is darker or the person is older, they may need to spend more time exposed to the sun.

Reasonable amounts of sun exposure on arms and legs for short amounts of time are not likely to increase the risk of serious skin cancers.

We suggest speaking to your doctor if you have questions about vitamin D, if you're getting enough of it and what you should be doing to help you absorb it.



Photo by rockandbacon.