23 Nov Should You Take Vitamin D?
Should you supplement with vitamin D?
Do you need a vitamin D supplement? Because you might. Almost every single person that has walked through our doors and that has gotten their levels tested needed a vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D is so essential to our immune system. It’s essential for a healthy pregnancy. It’s essential for breastfeeding as vitamin D is very dependent on mama. And so, when you’re breastfeeding and you’re needing that extra demand from a breastfeeding baby, you need vitamin D to pass on.
You need this nutrient to help your blood sugar and insulin relationship to work well together. Vitamin D plays so many roles in our body. There’s a couple of things that can hold us back from getting proper vitamin D amounts, such as not getting enough food sources.. The best sources are seafood and egg yolks and beef liver.
One of the best lifestyle factors is sunshine. Sunshine is super fantastic because it uses our skin receptors and translates into the vitamin D that we can use. Unfortunately, we’re a society that is super indoors. So, we’re not getting outside enough. We are not getting outside long enough and exposing as much of our body as we can, The darker skin you have, the longer you have to be outside.
So, walking from your car into a building is most likely not enough time to get your vitamin D, especially if you’re wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt. And with seasons like this, as we roll into the winter, where the sun isn’t out as long, it’s cold out, so we’re not outside further keeping us inside, this can lead to a deficiency.
Some of my favorite supplements are sublingual drops pairing K2 and D3 together and I love this little match because I think they’re just best friends. And they both help each other absorb and utilize and reduce the risk of getting too much. The dosage for vitamin D is very dependent on you. It can range from 2,000 all the way to 20,000 IU depending on how deficient you’re in.
Now, I will say that when you get your level checked by your doctor, a lot of the lab ranges are wrong. I am not looking for what the average person has and what the lab says is good because I have a lens on more health focused and wanting to prevent chronic disease and get you to your optimal levels. Optimal levels can be between 70 and 90, ideally not over a hundred, ideally it’s not under 60.
If you are in that range, on average around 70, that’s a great place to be. And so, you’ll find that it can just be 41, it could be technically normal, but that is not optimal ranges. So, the best thing you can do is work with a functional nutritionist and really figure out, get the right labs and learn how to optimize your body for better health.
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