You Need the Sunshine Vitamin--D

6/4/2008

Vitamin D is called the sunshine vitamin because the body makes it naturally when skin is exposed to the sun. However, most of us just don’t make enough of it. In fact, current estimates are that about 40% of American kids and teens are low in vitamin D.

Among the reasons for this deficiency are:

• Air pollution. Smog cuts the strength of the sun’s rays.
• Living indoors. Kids spend less time playing outdoors than they used to because of both increased TV/video/computer time and unsafe neighborhoods.
• Skin color. African-Americans, Latinos, and others whose darker skin blocks the sun more may not be able to make enough vitamin D.
• Living in Northern states where sunshine is weak and winter days are short.
• Not supplementing with vitamin D while nursing. Breast milk can’t provide enough vitamin D, so both baby and mom should supplement.

You don’t want to come up short with vitamin D. It’s becoming more and more obvious that this vitamin is very important not only for building strong bones, maintaining a healthy immune system, and reducing inflammation, but also for preventing conditions like osteoporosis, colon and skin cancers, heart failure, and some auto-immune diseases.

Where can you get vitamin D? Well, 20 minutes of sunshine a day would probably do the trick in the southern half of the country, but I don’t usually recommend it. I agree with the American Academy of Pediatrics that the risk of childhood sun exposure leading to skin cancers later is just too high, so I always advise parents to put sunscreen on their kids when they’re outdoors, and keep babies out of direct sun altogether. That said, few of us are so generous in our application of sunscreen that skin doesn’t get some sun through it anyway.

So where’s that vitamin D supposed to come from? Very few foods are naturally high in vitamin D, so you’ll have to look for foods fortified with vitamin D—often found in combination with calcium. Good food sources of vitamin D include:

• Oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, sardines, and tuna
• Fortified milk
• Fortified soy milk
• Fortified yogurt, though most yogurt, cheese, ice cream, and other dairy foods are not fortified.
• Fortified cereal
• Fortified orange or other fruit juice

Infants, children, and teens should get at least 400 IU of vitamin D a day from food or supplements. Breast milk has very little vitamin D, so breast-fed babies will need a daily liquid multivitamin with 400 IU of D in it; infant formulas are fortified with vitamin D to that same level.

Children who don’t drink at least a quart a day of fortified milk or non-dairy drink should take supplementary vitamin D. Dark-skinned babies and children, and vegan or lactose-intolerant children are most at risk of not getting adequate levels of the sunshine vitamin.

Less-than-ideal levels of vitamin D can cause thinning hair, contribute to chronic pain syndromes, and long-term can lead to a condition of weak bone and muscle called osteomalacia. So be sure your kids are getting the vitamin D they need to grow up strong and healthy.