Hi Diane, thank you for all these great sources! This really is a hot topic - I am so happy that I covered it this past week and thank you for being so engaged and interested.
The Institute of Medicine recommends an intake of 200 IU up to age 50 and then 400 IU between the ages of 51 and 70. After age 70, your intake should be higher at roughly 600 IU. However, it says that optimum intakes are much higher - 1,000 to 2,000 IU over the age of two.
I recommended taking a supplement because it seems to be very difficult to get those levels just from the foods that we eat each day. The Institute sites that taking up to 2,000 IU per day as a supplement is safe. It also sites that some people, particularly those with darker skin, live in the northern US, or spend little time in the sun, may need 3,000 to 4,000 IU a day.
If anything, this piece and the discussion that followed definitely sent me to the store to buy a vitamin D supplement! I hope this helps answer your question and thank you again for those great sources. This is a really interesting topic and I hope that there will be more studies that help narrow down how much we need - and from what sources - in the near future.
If you're still interested in vitamin D and nutrition in general - the information that I site above is from this resource: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/vitamin-d/index.html.
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Hi Diane, thank you for all these great sources! This really is a hot topic - I am so happy that I covered it this past week and thank you for being so engaged and interested.
The Institute of Medicine recommends an intake of 200 IU up to age 50 and then 400 IU between the ages of 51 and 70. After age 70, your intake should be higher at roughly 600 IU. However, it says that optimum intakes are much higher - 1,000 to 2,000 IU over the age of two.
I recommended taking a supplement because it seems to be very difficult to get those levels just from the foods that we eat each day. The Institute sites that taking up to 2,000 IU per day as a supplement is safe. It also sites that some people, particularly those with darker skin, live in the northern US, or spend little time in the sun, may need 3,000 to 4,000 IU a day.
If anything, this piece and the discussion that followed definitely sent me to the store to buy a vitamin D supplement! I hope this helps answer your question and thank you again for those great sources. This is a really interesting topic and I hope that there will be more studies that help narrow down how much we need - and from what sources - in the near future.
If you're still interested in vitamin D and nutrition in general - the information that I site above is from this resource: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/vitamin-d/index.html.
Hope this helps!
June 22, 2009 - 4:31pmThis Comment
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