Vitamin D News: Experts Propose Massive Increase in Recommendations

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The latest in vitamin D news is this: International experts are calling for an increase in the amount of vitamin D that is recommended daily. Scientists writing in the July 28 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine call for a change to the global policy on the sunshine vitamin. They say: “Responsible medicine demands that worldwide vitamin D nutritional guidelines reflect current scientific knowledge about vitamin D’s spectrum of activities.”

Increasing the amount recommended daily of vitamin D to 2,000 international units (IU) per day, the authors say, would reduce the frequency of certain diseases — such as childhood rickets, adult osteomalacia, cancer, autoimmune type 1 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and obesity — as well as cut medical costs while increasing longevity.

Conventional wisdom used to be that our bodies would produce enough vitamin D to keep us healthy by being exposed to sunlight. But as skin cancer became a concern, and more people started staying indoors more, our vitamin D levels declined. More and more research began to reveal that sun exposure doesn’t provide enough vitamin D to ensure optimal health, and that vitamin D supplements are the best way to get enough. The vitamin D news is out, and hopefully it won’t be long before the nutritional guidelines are revised to reflect current findings.

Current recommended daily intakes (RDIs) for vitamin D lie between 200 and 600 IU per day, even though science shows that healthful and preventive benefits can be better achieved with levels closer to 2,000 IU per day without safety concerns.

Source:

Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (now known as Experimental Biology and Medicine). doi:10.1258/ebm.2010.010014.

Tags: policy, vitamin d, vitamin d deficiency, vitamin d news