How Much Vitamin D Should You Supplement

There's a little buzz right now about Vitamin D and a new report from Europe. Some people are drawing inaccurate conclusions from it. The report discusses 18 separate studies using various amounts of Vitamin D on various populations. It generally says that adding a vitamin D supplement is a good practice because people tend to not die during the study periods when they're taking the vitamin.

Here is the actual conclusions from the study:

"Conclusions :

Intake of ordinary doses of vitamin D supplements seems
to be associated with decreases in total mortality rates. The
relationship between baseline vitamin D status, dose of vitamin D
supplements, and total mortality rates remains to be investigated.
Population-based, placebo-controlled randomized trials with total
mortality as the main end point should be organized for confirming
these findings."

For the time being readers should rely on other authorities to determine their personal dosage. There doesn't seem to be anything in this report that would cause me to change my dosage--400IU--which seems reasonable and is close to the average dose used the various studies in the report.

Take a deep breath,

Dr. Ron