If you’re one of those people—and, well, there’s a pretty good chance you might be—it’s important to do what you can do to get more vitamin D in your life. Here’s what you need to know about this crucial vitamin—and how to get your levels up (and keep them up). That’s not all, either. The sunshine vitamin also supports the body’s response to inflammation, promotes cell growth, and is critical for immune function.* Without ample vitamin D (more on that in a second), a variety of body systems struggle to function optimally.* The National Academies recommend a cutoff of 20 ng/ml for sufficiency, while The Endocrine Society more recently vetted the science and recommended a 30 ng/ml cutoff. As Ferira expounds, “to be clear, these cut points are numbers to avoid. In other words, you want to exceed 30 ng/ml daily for most of your life to reap the full benefits of vitamin D for health.”* In fact, a vitamin D supplement less than 20 or 30 ng/ml is associated with suboptimal bone density (not something to mess with). To support your personal health, you’ll want to get familiar with your 25(OH)D levels, which means asking your health care provider for this simple blood test6. This is the clinical measure of your whole-body vitamin D status—and necessary information if you want to track your baseline status and watch how optimizing your vitamin D intake makes a significant impact.* Now, here’s where things get interesting: Research shows that 100 IU of vitamin D3 (which is the body’s preferred form) per day raises 25(OH)D levels in the average (healthy weight) adult by 1 ng/ml7. So, if you want to hit 50 ng/ml, 1,000 or 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day won’t get you there; in fact, they won’t even get you close. Based on this science, you’d need closer to 5,000 IU per day to reach the optimal range.* Sina Gallo, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Georgia, agrees: “It’s difficult to meet the requirement for this vitamin through diet alone.” To give you a sense of what you’re working with (and why folks aren’t hitting 5,000 IU per day from food alone), the following foods are the best sources of vitamin D out there: One major caveat here: Getting enough vitamin D from sunlight risks exposing you to unsafe skin practices. “You can try to get some [vitamin D] naturally by being exposed for five minutes before applying sunscreen, but the length of time can be affected by individual differences,” Gallo says. (Read: Depending on your skin tone, you may need more sun exposure than is ultimately safe in order to produce the amount of vitamin D you’re after.) There are other factors to consider, too, including the time of day you’re out in the sun, the season, how much of your skin is exposed, and the latitude you live at. All of these affect your ability to get ample vitamin D from that golden sun. And, of course, lifetime sun exposure is something to be prudent about overall. Here’s what to look for: First, go for vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), which, as Gallo explains, is the form our skin produces from sun exposure. It’s also been shown to be the most effective at raising and maintaining our 25(OH)D levels (your status biomarker). Next, look for a high-potency option that provides at least 5,000 IU so that you’re getting enough to hit that 50 ng/ml+ goal for 25(OH)D. Folks with more fat tissue (i.e., overweight or obese), will require two to three times more vitamin D9 to achieve the same serum status, according to science and clinical consensus. Ideally, Crouch recommends looking for a vitamin D3 product that comes in a formula that combines it with a healthy fat. This way, you can take the supplement with or without a meal. (Since vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin10, it needs some fat in order to be absorbed properly.)* In fact, mindbodygreen specially formulated our vitamin D3 potency+ product to check all of these important boxes, and then some.
