Vitamin D

My grown up son - who lives in Scotland - recently had to have his Vitamin D level checked. It was found to be, not just low - but dangerously low.

This does not surprise me. I have been advocating that we all take Vitamin D supplements for some time - especially us pensioners.

When I was a medical student very little was known about most Vitamins. It was known that you mainly get Vitamin D from sunlight and that people with a lack of Vitamin D got rickets, which made their bones so soft that they developed bendy bandy legs.

It was known that calcium and Vitamin D have a close relationship. You need Calcium for strong bones, but it is no good without Vitamin D.

What was not taken on board until a few years ago is just how important vitamin D is for all sorts of things and that you can be having nasty problems well before you get to the stage of full blown rickets.

A thinking GP in Glasgow wondered why her patients with darker skins seemed to attend more and to have more problems than others. Could it be because the pigment in their skin made it more difficult for them to absorb vitamin D?

So she did a small trial and tested her patient’s vitamin D levels. The results showed that those with darker skins had lower levels, thus proving her theory. However, what it also showed was that nearly all her patients had low levels.

Scotland does not get much sun (especially Glasgow) and in the winter months the sun is so low in the sky that it is impossible for us to get any Vitamin D from it, even if we are brave enough to expose some flesh!

So we need to eat more foods such as oily fish or egg yolks and we need to take vitamin D supplements.

However - which supplement should we take and how much?  All the available ones, that I can find, are made by companies that don’t inspire me with confidence - and that includes the supermarkets. A recent report showed that most vitamin pills do not contain what they say on the label. I would like to see one of the mainstream pharmaceutical companies produce a vitamin D supplement that has gone through the same stringent process as aspirin.

There is one called - Fultium D3 800 IU made by Internis Pharmaceuticals, but sadly it is prescription only.

More and more studies are showing the importance of Vitamin D and linking it to conditions such as MS. Scotland has more MS than anywhere else, could this be why?

It is thought to play an important role in the autoimmune and anti-inflammatory systems with early studies linking also to asthma, high blood pressure and heart problems, diabetes, cancer and depression and to cognitive decline in older people

Older people have particular difficulty in making Vitamin D from the sun or absorbing it from food.

So start supplementing.

Buy a product with Vitamin - D3.  Take 600 IU daily if you are under age 70 and 800 IU if you are over 70 (NHS recommendation).

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/

Pregnant women and children also are strongly advised to supplement.

Everyone in Scotland should supplement especially during the winter.

Solgar make a product which contains Vitamin D3 600 IU – or so they claim.

It is dangerous to take crazy mega dose supplements of Vitamin D. It can cause calcium to be deposited in the kidneys.

Here is a helpful calculation when shopping for vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol)

1mcg = 40 IU

So

15mcg = 600IU

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20710028