With news headlines reporting on the benefit of vitamin D in reducing the likelihood of respiratory-tract infections, you may be left wondering whether you need to take some of this vitamin as a nutritional supplement.
Vitamin D is manufactured in the skin when sunlight hits bare flesh at a certain angle. The angle of the sun’s rays are only able to initiate this process when the sun is high in the sky, thus, during the winter months, and in early morning and late afternoon of summer when the sun is lower in the sky, no vitamin D can be manufactured. It is also impossible for the skin to produce vitamin D through clothing or sunscreen. This means that even when we could potentially make this vitamin, the concern to protect skin means we keep covered and remain low in this vital nutrient.
Add to this the fact that many of us are working in doors all through the summer, and get to see very little sunshine day-to-day, and that our British summers can be characterised by cloud rather than sun, and you can easily see that many of us actually go into the winter with low vitamin D status. An additional factor to bear in mind is that darker skins produce less vitamin D, so can be at particular risk for low levels.
The only sure way to know exactly what our vitamin D status is, and therefore how much we should be supplementing, is to have a vitamin D blood test. This is often available through the GP, or you can arrange it privately by contacting City Hospital, Birmingham for a blood spot finger prick test, or contact me for a full laboratory test to assess levels of your oil soluble vitamins (Vitamins A, D, E, K and CoQ10).
Once you have the results of your vitamin D levels, you need to supplement in a way that brings this into an optimal range in order to benefit from the many health-supporting aspects of vitamin D, and the input of a nutritional therapist may be helpful here.
The new review and meta-analysis, published in the British Medical Journal, demonstrated that daily or weekly vitamin D supplements could mean a reduction in 3 million people experiencing an acute respiratory tract infection each year. Vitamin D is one of a number of nutrients which help to fight bacteria and viruses. However, as mentioned above, for a number of reasons, a good many of us may be low in this particular vitamin as we go through the winter.
Public Health England has previously recommended supplementing vitamin D to support bone and muscle health, but the latest research confirms that it is also important for immune function. The research revealed the benefit of daily or weekly supplementation rather than occasional massive doses, with the greatest benefit seen by those who demonstrated a deficiency in vitamin D
Ensuring optimal vitamin D intake may encourage a reduction in hospital admissions for respiratory tract infections, but it is important to remember that no one nutrient is a ‘Fix- All’. Again, this is where a nutritional consultation can help to uncover your own nutritional requirements, with diet and supplement recommendations made accordingly.
