With Vitamin D - Twice is Nice

news you may not know

It's a Powerhouse...

Sure, the vitamin craze can get a little insane at times. Just step into any Whole Foods and you'll get the picture. Folks load up their carts with every imaginable type of supplement (is Nick Nolte listening) to try to capture the fountain of youth. But, really -when you have to talk to the Whole Foods' credit manager to arrange a vitamins-are-wonderful-for-you payment plan, well...

But, there is one little, often overlooked vitamin that continues to receive rave reviews from the medical experts: the big D. Yes, vitamin D is in the news again.

The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends infants get twice as much vitamin D as they did just, well, just last week. They now recommend infants receive 400 international units of vitamin D each day. Why the change? No, it's not that they were bored and needed something to keep them busy.

It's that vitamin D is often not consumed in adequate quantities from natural sources. Especially in infants who are breastfed. That's because many mothers themselves are deficient in vitamin D. The primary source of vitamin is Mother Nature, by way of that big bright ball in the sky. But, with air pollution, sunscreen and fear of skin cancer, the sun has fewer opportunities to work its magic these days.

Vitamin D helps prevent rickets in children, a disease that softens the bones and causes stunted growth. Though rickets is rare in the U.S., there are other significant benefits to vitamin D, including protection from osteoporosis later in life.

So forsake the credit manager, but not the little powerhouse vitamin D.

To read more about the study, see this from Reuters. To learn more about vitamin D, see this from the Office of Dietary Supplements.