The vitamin D dilemma

Vitamin D is great for your bones, but sunshine can harm your skin. How do you solve this vitamin D dilemma?

Vitamin D doesn’t make it easy for health conscious citizens in this modern world.  If you’re a vegan or vegetarian, avoid commercially packaged foods and worship at the altar of the SPF, you have a greater vulnerability to a vitamin D deficiency than someone who chows down on junk food and slurps full fat milk.Natural food sources for Vitamin D aren’t all that plentiful. What there are come from animals; oily fish, egg yolks, cheese, dairy and beef liver top the list.

The Sunshine Vitamin

Unlike other vitamins and minerals that are solely derived from food sources, vitamin D can get into the system another way too. In response to contact with UVB rays from the sun, the skin actually synthesizes it for itself, hence the moniker the sunshine vitamin.

But how is this supposed to work when week after week I’m urging you to cover up and wear sunblock to prevent sun exposure? Is this going to be one of those devil’s decisions where your choices are to either endure skin cancer and premature photo-aging on the one hand, or to suffer osteoporosis and an increased vulnerability to a host of cancers and other diseases on the other?

The clinical literature delivers mixed messages; some say that sunscreen use has a direct impact on Vitamin D deficiency and others say it doesn’t.  What we do know, however, is that day to day most people do not apply their sun protection thoroughly or frequently enough to eliminate all the UVB bouncing around. So the upside there, I suppose, is that you’re getting some beneficial Vitamin D synthesis that way.

The Supplement Angle

When it comes to vitamin D, I make an exception to my own rule that you shouldn’t use supplements as a substitute for getting your nutrition from food. 600IU is the recommended vitamin D intake for those ages 1 to 70 years old with the upper toxic levels at 4000 IU.

So the logical thing would be to figure out the IUs your skin is making by itself (in collaboration with UVB) and then supplement the difference up to 600. Some researchers have said that just 10 minutes a day with 25 percent of your total body exposed is the equivalent to 400IU. But this figure is next to meaningless because it doesn’t factor in the most important variable of all . . . your skin’s own natural pigment.

As a by-product of geography, evolution and ethnicity, the skin of those in sun-deprived Northern climes became very efficient in harnessing the available UVB for vitamin D synthesis. In contrast, those who evolved in the solar-rich, all-year sunny skies to the South didn’t have to because there was plenty of UVB to go around.  In real world terms today this means the darker your natural pigment, the more important it is to look into vitamin D supplementation.  But it doesn’t end there.