Welcome to HSPH Nutrition Source Update, an e-letter to help you cut through confusing information and find practical strategies for healthy eating.
March 2011 |
Boosting Vitamin D: Not Enough or Too Much?
Watch live webcast March 29
 The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health
The Andelot Series on Current Science Controversies Boosting Vitamin D: Not Enough or Too Much?
Presented in collaboration with Reuters
March 29
1:00-2:00 PM
Watch live webcast at www.ForumHSPH.org
EXPERT PARTICIPANTS
Walter Willett, Chair, Department of Nutrition, and Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health
JoAnn Manson, Chief, Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Member of the IOM Committee to Review Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium; and Principal Investigator, VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL)
Patsy Brannon, Member of the IOM Committee to Review Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium, and Professor, Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University
Bess Dawson-Hughes Senior Scientist and Director, Bone Metabolism Laboratory, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University; Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine; and Past President and Trustee, National Osteoporosis Foundation
MODERATOR
Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor, Reuters Health
Submit questions for the expert participants before or during the live webcast to theforum@hsph.harvard.edu.
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Vitamin D: A global concern
 Our bodies can obtain vitamin D from diet and make it from sun exposure. But worldwide, an estimated 1 billion people aren't getting enough. If you live north of the line connecting San Francisco to Philadelphia and Athens to Beijing, you may be "D-ficient". The same holds true if you don't get outside for at least a 15-minute daily walk in the sun. African-Americans and others with dark skin, as well as older individuals, tend to have much lower levels of vitamin D, as do people who are overweight or obese. Learn more about what increases your risk for vitamin D deficiency. Cause for concern Research conducted over the past decade suggests that vitamin D plays a much broader disease-fighting role than once thought. Insufficient vitamin D may increase the risk of a host of chronic diseases, such as osteoporosis, heart disease, some cancers, and multiple sclerosis, as well as infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and even the seasonal flu. In industrialized countries, doctors are even seeing the resurgence of rickets, the bone-weakening disease that had been largely eradicated through vitamin D fortification. Learn more about the complex role of vitamin D in disease prevention. Making up for low DVery few foods naturally contain vitamin D. Good sources include dairy products and breakfast cereals (both of which are fortified with vitamin D), and fatty fish such as salmon and tuna.
For most people, the best way to get enough vitamin D is taking a supplement, but the level in most multivitamins (400 IU) is too low. Encouragingly, some manufacturers have begun adding 800 or 1,000 IU of vitamin D to their standard multivitamin preparations. If the multivitamin you take does not have 1,000 IU of vitamin D, you may want to consider adding a separate vitamin D supplement, especially if you don't spend much time in the sun. Talk to your healthcare provider. What type of vitamin D supplement is the best? Read more about why vitamin D and calcium guidelines recently released by the Institute of Medicine are too low in vitamin D and too high in calcium for bone health.
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