Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

According to most studies, if you are over the age of 50 and don’t spend adequate time in the sunshine, you may be vitamin D deficient. Plus, as you may know, it can be difficult to get sufficient amounts of vitamin D from enriched foods. And now, more and more doctors just like me are questioning the outdated standards for healthy vitamin D supplementation.

In a new article published in the journal Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology,1 16 doctors and professors have challenged the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board’s (FNB) recommendations for the daily allowance of vitamin D.

“The 1997 FNB recommendations offend the most basic principles of pharmacology and toxicology, leading us to conclude that the current official guidelines and limitations for vitamin D intakes are scientifically indefensible,” the article’s authors state.

Looking back at 2008, I vote for vitamin D as the biggest nutrition news of the year. We all knew vitamin D was needed for optimal bone formation and maintenance, but I don’t think anyone really appreciated its full importance for our health. From cancer to heart disease prevention to protection against autoimmunity, vitamin D may very well be the most important nutrient to get enough of.

With all the new information on its disease-preventing benefits, many researchers suggest that the Daily Recommended Intake (DRI) for vitamin D should be raised from 400 IUs to a minimum of 1000 IUs. And further studies have found that toxicity is really a non-issue.7 So, no longer are we disputing that the DRI is far too low. Instead, the focus has turned to making sure you are getting enough.

Most of us know that vitamin D is made from cholesterol in the body. Sun exposure is the catalyst that makes this happen. When sun hits the body, cholesterol in the skin is converted to vitamin D. To get enough vitamin D, we are told that we need from 5 to 30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back — without sunscreen. But that’s only if you live below the 42° latitude marker. (In the US, that line runs from Northern California to Boston.)

Have you ever noticed how you feel happier when you have a chance to sit or walk in the warm sun? Doesn’t just going outside on a sunny day calm your nerves and lift your spirits?

By contrast, consider what happens and how you feel during the cold and dreary winter months. Many of us experience darker moods. We are more likely to become sick with colds and flu. We often gain weight and crave carbohydrates.

Then, come spring and summer, these symptoms magically disappear without treatment. Well, there is a reason for this.

Your body needs sunlight just like it needs nutrients. In many ways, your physiology is as closely linked to the sun as that of plants. Plants use sunlight to photosynthesize chlorophyll. By a comparable process your body uses sunlight to photosynthesize vitamin D — a molecule that is vitally essential to almost every aspect of your biochemistry and physiology.

Want an easy way to protect your heart? Get some sun.

More and more reports prove the importance of vitamins for maintaining health. Most recently, research shows an association between vitamin D levels and the risk of heart attack.

Scientists have noted for some time that heart disease has a higher incidence in northern climates, as well as during the winter, and at lower altitudes. These associations suggested a possible role for vitamin D since they describe situations that reduce sun exposure. The body produces copious amounts of vitamin D in response to sunlight.

The evidence keeps mounting that the sun is good for you. In the latest study, high levels of sun exposure were associated with a 47-percent reduced risk of advanced breast cancer in women with light skin pigmentation.