This Morning: Dr Michael Mosley discusses vitamin D dosage
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Vitamin D deficiency can lead to various health problems including bone deformities and pain. Some evidence suggests that a lack of this vitamin could even be linked to prostate cancer. As this deficiency tends to be prevalent during the winter months, the Government advises looking into taking a vitamin D supplement. There are also foods rich in this vitamin.
Your body is able to create vitamin D from direct sunlight when you spend time outdoors.
Even short periods in the sun with your skin exposed can give you enough.
However, due to the lack of sunshine during winter, people are not able to synthesise this vitamin organically.
The Government recommends everyone to consider opting for supplements of this vitamin to keep up healthy levels.
Vitamin D can also be obtained from a healthy diet, consisting of food rich in this vitamin, the NHS reports.
Good sources of the sunshine vitamin include:
- Oily fish
- Red meat
- Liver
- Egg yolks
- Fortified foods (some fat spreads and breakfast cereals).
- Oily fish describes types including salmon, sardines, herring and mackerel.
Salmon is the one food packed with this vitamin and can provide your recommended daily amount.
Anyone older than one year needs a daily dose of 10 micrograms, the health service states.
Another amount used to measure vitamin D content is International Units (IU).
One microgram of this vitamin is equivalent to 40 IU. This means your recommended daily intake is 400 IU.
About 85 grams of salmon contains 447 IU, meeting the recommended dose, according to Cleveland Clinic.
But the preparation process might get rid of some of this vitamin D content, according to research from the US National Library of Medicine.
The researchers found that baked salmon had almost the same content of IU, while salmon fried in vegetable oil lost almost 50 percent of the vitamin.
Another factor is whether the salmon was caught in the wild or farmed.
In the study, the wild catch had a higher amount of the sunshine vitamin, scoring 988 IU, compared to the farmed counterpart containing only 250 IU.
You might have also heard that cow’s milk is a good source of vitamin D.
However, the NHS explains that cow’s milk isn’t fortified with this vitamin in the UK, compared to other countries.
If you decide to opt for supplements instead, sticking to the recommended dose of 10 micrograms is enough for most people, the NHS advises.
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