Have you heard about the new guidelines for vitamin D testing released earlier this year? These guidelines say that, for most people, routine screening for vitamin D levels is unnecessary. But that doesn’t mean that your vitamin D level is not important for your health!
We don’t agree with the new guidelines, especially as the new recommendations for supplementation have only been raised a little, to 600 IU (international units) daily until age 70, and 800 IU daily for people 70 or older.
We SHINE doctors check vitamin D levels for many of our patients, and never find those amounts to be adequate to keep even an otherwise healthy person out of the vitamin D deficiency zone. Most of us don’t live our lives outdoors in the sunshine. And some people make vitamin D less effectively than others, but we can’t find that out without testing!
Vitamin D production can be affected by:
Your genetics: some people are predisposed genetically to make less, so they need to take more.
Your kidney and liver function: both organs play a part in making active vitamin D.
How much sun your skin is exposed to, and whether you wear sunscreen when you are outdoors.
Your cholesterol levels: cholesterol is the building block for making vitamin D.
We know that vitamin D affects the health of our bones, immune system, sleep, mood, and more, so it makes sense to optimize it. There are few signs of vitamin D deficiency until it becomes extreme, when exhaustion, insomnia, bone pain, muscle weakness, mood changes, hair loss, or lower immunity may be seen. But we SHINE doctors see many people who are deficient without experiencing any of those symptoms. Sub-optimal levels mean suboptimal health, but not necessarily overt illness.
Interestingly, research from the University of South Australia (August 2022) shows a link between low vitamin D levels and inflammation. You may have heard that inflammation is an underlying factor in many chronic diseases. The researchers conclude that vitamin D levels may provide a biomarker to identify people at higher risk of chronic illness with inflammatory components, such as heart disease, diabetes and auto-immune diseases. Therefore boosting vitamin D in people who are deficient may reduce chronic inflammation and those related diseases.
Testing several times, in summer and winter, taking into account the amount of supplementation at the time of testing, can help people learn how much they need in different seasons, so they can supplement intelligently.
People with liver or kidney problems are well advised to test their levels, as they don’t want to add vitamin D deficiency symptoms to their current medical concerns. Likewise people who avoid the sun or use lots of sunscreen are healthier knowing how much to supplement to compensate for that.
The government policy not to pay for routine screening of vitamin D levels may have been affected by the fact that the test for vitamin D is pricey. It is about 3 times the price of the test for red and white blood cell levels. When it comes to vitamin D, we are looking at a chronic deficiency that reduces optimal health and predisposes to chronic health concerns, not an acute problem that could be life-threatening in the near future. It is a test for a nutritional factor useful for long-term preventive health care.
So again, this test falls down the priority list. And our medical system has to make decisions as to what to prioritize. The system can’t afford to offer it to everyone on the taxpayers’ purse.
Taking 600 or 800 IU of vitamin D daily will help people be less deficient, so it’s a good thing, it’s just not optimal. Given that vitamin D helps us in so many ways, and is inexpensive and easy to take, we think it’s a no-brainer to check whether your levels are optimal, and how much it takes to get them there and keep them there.
If you can afford to test your vitamin D level, take into account the time of year, to get the most reliable information you can.
If you cannot afford to test your vitamin D, we feel that a safe supplement level for most healthy people is 1,000 IU in the summer and 2,000 IU in the winter.
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