How Much Vitamin D Do You Need?

The question of how much is enough Vitamin D is huge.

Currently, there’s scientific debate about how much vitamin D people need each day. The Institute of Medicine, in a long-awaited report released on November 30, 2010 recommends tripling the daily vitamin D intake for children and adults in the U.S. and Canada, to 600 IU per day. The report also recognized the safety of vitamin D by increasing the upper limit from 2,000 to 4,000 IU per day, and acknowledged that even at 4,000 IU per day, there was no good evidence of harm. The new guidelines, however, are overly conservative about the recommended intake, and they do not give enough weight to some of the latest science on vitamin D and health. For bone health and chronic disease prevention, many people are likely to need more vitamin D than even these new government guidelines recommend.

The Institute of Medicine's new recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 600 IU for people ages 1 to 70, and 800 IU after age 70. Yet this recommendation is overly conservative, since strong evidence shows optimal intakes are higher, at least 1,000–2,000 IU for those over age 2.

The new guidelines from the IOM (Institute of Medicine) note that in children over the age of 9 and in adults, taking up to 4,000 IU per day as a supplement is safe. For children ages 4 to 8, up to 3,000 IU per day is considered safe, and for children ages 1 to 3, 2,500 IU; in older infants (6 to 12 months), up to 1,500 IU per day is considered safe, and in young infants (0 to 6 months), up to 1,000 IU.

Most people find that taking supplements is their easiest way to get Vitamin D. However studies show that most multivitamins (400 IU) is to low. However some of the maufacturers have started adding 800 or 1,000 IU of vitamin D to the mulitvitamins now.

Getting more exposure to UVB rays of light, the rays that trigger the skin to produce vitamin D are of course stronger near the equator and weaker at higher latitudes. So in the fall and winter, people who live at higher latitudes can't make much if any vitamin D from the sun.

That means that in order to get enough UVB exposure it would likely be done indoors in a tanning unit. Remember 20 minutes in a tanning unit is equal to 2 hours in the sun.