Health/ Nutrition/ Veganism

Vitamin D Winter – It’s That Time Of Year Again

 

Let’s start this off with a disclaimer: I am not a medical health professional. What I’m sharing with you today is information that has been carefully researched and referenced from leading authorities in North America, such as the USDA. But ultimately, your doctor knows where it’s at, and this article is not a substitution for his or her medical advice.

Do you live in the warm tropics where sunlight is reliable and constant? Or the more southerly areas of the United States, such as Los Angeles, Florida or Austin? If so, UV rays are strong all year long in your area. For the rest of us, whether we be from parts of the US, Canada, Europe or Australia, the issue of getting adequate sunshine during the winter months is very important, since vitamin D is created in our bodies from UV rays.

In this article, we’ll discuss vitamin D – what it is, why we need it and where to get it, how much we should be getting, and vegan issues surrounding this important nutrient. We’ll also talk about supplements on the market and where you can find them. So let’s hop on to it!

 

What is Vitamin D, and Why Should I Care?

Vitamin D is kind of a weirdo vitamin because in addition to being able to use it from food and supplements, our bodies can manufacture it from sunlight, making it akin to a hormone. It’s a big team player with calcium, and not getting enough vitamin D means that our bodies aren’t able to absorb as much calcium from food, which is bad news for our bones. Getting enough vitamin D is even suggested to help combat certain cancers, hypertension, depression and other health problems, and is an exciting area of research, though still in its early stages. [1]

On a hot summer day, a light-skinned person might only need to be in the sun for 5-10 minutes to get enough vitamin D, but wintertime in more northerly latitudes is a different story. When the UV rays from the sun are no longer strong enough to help us make this vitamin, we can turn to either fortified foods such as soy milk, margarine or orange juice, or take a supplement. This is crucial for many of us, since authorities suggest that about three quarters of Americans are vitamin D deficient. [2]

 

Who Needs Vitamin D, and How Much?

For folks at a latitude of around 42 degrees north, which is about the level of Boston, Toronto and Detroit, UV rays aren’t strong enough to stimulate vitamin D production during December and January. For those of us even higher on the world map at around 50 degrees north, like the majority of Europe including the UK, and pretty much all of Canada with the exception of southern Ontario and Quebec, the sun’s UV rays fade between November to February. [3] Even if you live in a warm location, if you don’t get outdoors regularly or thick clouds tend to dominate the sky, you might want to be sure you’re getting enough vitamin D.

According to Health Canada and the US Department of Agriculture, the RDI (recommended daily intake) for kids and most adults is set at 600 IU (15mcg) per day. For folks over the age of 70, that number increases to 800 IU (20mcg). However, though we can’t overdose on vitamin D when we get it from sunlight, it’s possible to get too much of a good thing from supplements, so the upper limit has been set at 4,000 ICU (100mcg).

In order to meet the daily RDI for vitamin D from eating fortified foods, you could:

-Drink a little over 2 cups of Silk soymilk (or other fortified drink)

-Use 5 teaspoons of vegan Becel margarine

-Eat several bowls of fortified breakfast cereal (not all are vegan)

-Eat some combination of the above

Otherwise, during the dark winter months in northern locales, it’s prudent to take a supplement. They come in all shapes and sizes, from tablets to multivitamins, but I prefer liquid drops since it’s so easy and hassle-free to ingest.

 

Vegan Issues with Vitamin D

There are two types of vitamin D – vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Vitamin D3 is used widely in fortified foods but is not vegan, since it’s derived from lanolin (wool fat). D2, on the other hand, is vegan and typically made from UV-saturated fungi. There has been some debate about the effectiveness of vitamin D2 in comparison to D3, but recent and comprehensive studies suggest that they both work well and can successfully treat deficiency. [4]

 

Companies such as Source Of Life Garden and Vitashine have come up with a vegan version of D3, which is made from something called Lichen, a type of plant that is sort of like a cross between a fungi and algae. Since these products are fairly new, there aren’t any studies documenting their use (that I know of), but they have been rigorously tested and are proven to contain cholicalciferol (D3).

 

Where To Buy It

I live in a smallish Canadian city of roughly 200,000 people, and have had no trouble finding vitamin D2 supplements at my local health food store. If you can’t find it on the shelves, talk to the shop owner – in my experience, they’re typically enthusiastic about ordering in products for you.

Otherwise, you can turn to the great world wide web, where vitamin D2 supplements can be found everywhere from Amazon to Vegan Essentials (US-based) or Karmavore (Canada-based).

 

Summary

Vegans, vegetarians and omnivores alike need a reliable source of vitamin D, especially during the cold winter months. Whether the source be sunlight, supplements, fortified foods or an assortment of all three, it’s important to ensure your intake is adequate for the sake of your bones and overall health.

 

References:

 

1. Vitamin D Deficiency, Michael F. Holick, M.D., Ph.D., N Engl J Med 2007 (pdf)

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.170.7365&rep=rep1&type=pdf

2. Vitamin D deficiency soars in the U.S., study says, Scientific American, March 23, 2009

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-deficiency-united-states

3. Becoming Vegan, Brenda Davis, R.D. and Vesanto Melina, M.D., R.D., 2000

4. Vitamin D2 Is as Effective as Vitamin D3 in Maintaining Circulating Concentrations of 25-Hydroxyvitamin D, Michael F. Holick, Rachael M. Biancuzzo, et al, J Clin Endocrinol Metab., 2008 March

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2266966/?tool=pmcentrez

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7 Comments

  • Reply
    HenryLahore (2 comments)
    November 12, 2011 at 7:04 pm

    This article is pretty good – however

    Vitamin D3 is great, Vitamin D2 is bad for most mammals (including humans)
    Details: http://www.vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=2138

    Vitashine does make a VEGAN D3, but unsure about the other company
    details: http://www.vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=2136

    NO no no – need much more than 5-10 minutes per day. even if living in Southern US, much less Canada
    Details: http://www.vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=1689

    Beyond sunshine, supplements, and foods the article fails to mention UV as a source of vitamin D – which you make make very cheaply for use at home
    details: http://www.vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=982

  • Reply
    allysia (6 comments)
    November 14, 2011 at 5:28 am

    Hey Henry,

    Thanks for adding to the article by providing further information. When it comes to sun exposure time, I was referring to a couple of articles (which I referenced above) but this one by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board is fairly comprehensive:

    http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13050

    Across the board, it seems that major authorities suggest that 5-30 minutes twice a week midday in summer (and even spring and fall) without sunscreen and ample skin exposure is sufficient for many people, even those of us in more northern regions. The reason why the number tends to be lower than the ones you suggest is the carcinogenic risk of too much UV radiation. Because of all the variables, of course it’s difficult for the government to issue a “standard amount”, which is why the recommended amount of sunlight is low, because it’s expected that some supplementation will occur with diet. But recommending higher numbers is currently not commonplace because of skin cancer concerns.

  • Reply
    Chia (324 comments)
    November 14, 2011 at 2:11 pm

    Living in southern California, I feel totally spoiled by the sunny weather and not having to worry about lack of natural sunshine.

  • Reply
    happycowgirl (37 comments)
    November 22, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    I really appreciate this article. Thanks!

  • Reply
    allysia (6 comments)
    November 23, 2011 at 5:30 am

    Chia, my city is already covered in snow and below zero this time of year, so I’m just a teeny bit envious. ๐Ÿ™‚ Thanks Happycowgirl!

  • Reply
    MarkD (1 comments)
    November 25, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    Allysia, I hear you in your response to Henry, but the difficulty of assigning a standard dose might be because of false assumptions about health and the world we live in. Perhaps it is not only difficult, but impossible to come up with a standard dose. But does the “difficulty” ever stop government bureaucrats from issuing edicts that so many of our health professionals dutifully follow? No it doesn’t, including absurdly scary warnings over the years that lead people to shun what is healthy in any number of ways. I know family members in perfect health that have followed these guidelines in rejecting longstanding family traditions only to find later it was all wrong! In any case, I’m a bit non-plussed by your implication that the supposed “comprehensive” nature of the study you cite says anything about its accuracy. Ditto when you imply that “skin cancer concerns” as if this were all a matter of psychology.

    It is a fact that skin cancer is quite rare, and that it isn’t correlated with sun exposure. I grew up on a farm and spent hours in the sun daily in the days before tractors had any occupant coverings at all. Now I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone now, because too much sun does tend to age the skin though it never did mine so I guess I have good genes or something. But even comfort dictates moderation because no one likes to get burned. In any case it would be no surprise to me if humans don’t need more vitamin D than even the supposed enlightened studied on the subject do now. In fact I would be surprised if they don’t. The fact is the sun isn’t the killer our supposed protectors seem to think, however grudgingly they are willing to revise the standards up. Reasonable people might conclude that the experts have jumped the shark and we’d be better off looking to history, tradition, and common sense for how much sun we probably need. Those that do so will likely tend to agree with Henry.

    So we have blood pressure medication, anti-statins, anti-depressants, and on and on handed out like candy despite the fact that comprehensive studies for years have show little or not statistical benefit. In other words, the drugs don’t work. It is largely by playing on people’s fears that these drugs are taken at all, combined with trust that the scientific-medical system knows what its doing. But on so many important issues it doesn’t deserve this trust, no matter how well-intentioned it is. So I think we can do better than employing psychology to justify supposed scientific consensus. I have seen family members whose health has been seriously degraded by such supposed medical wisdom. Newsflash: the sun is not a killer, and we don’t need government experts to tell us how much vitamin D we need if the sun isn’t in fact a killer.

  • Reply
    robinhood (18 comments)
    March 12, 2012 at 9:46 am

    Being healthier on a vegetarian diet means spending less on health care. Food costs. Vegetarian foods tend to cost less than meat based item.Be vegetarian live more.Have a look of vegan making receipe dvd
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