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Vitamin D Deficiency Mystery Solved

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This has bothered me for a long time –

How can people who eat healthy and get plenty of exercise and sunshine possibly be deficient in Vitamin D?

It drove me crazy. There had to be an answer somewhere…

I Found It!

It turns out that you need a proper mix of vitamin A and D, and most of us actually ar getting too much vitamin A.

Everyone knows (or at least has heard of) the benefits of beta carotene. You might be eating more carrots, oranges, sweet potatoes, and anything else orange you can find. Your daily supplements have high doses of Vitamin A. Even a lot of your skin creams have vitamin A in some form or another.

We need a ratio of 2;1, vitamin D to vitamin A. But most of us are getting the opposite.

Just looking at my multi-vitamin, I get 3500 IU of vitamin A, but only 800 IU of vitamin D. Even thought I supplement with Vitamin D when I can’t get out in the sun, I’m still way out of balance.

The funny thing is, the RDA for vitamin A is 1000 IU a day. The RDA for vitamin D is only 400IU a day? Something is rotten here…

The RDA isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. And its only going to get worse with the newest FDA escapades. You’ve got to do the digging yourself – or rely on me to do it for you 😉

Did you know that your body can produce up to 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D just by getting out in the sun?

The secret is to be out as long as you can without burning. Burning is when you get too much.

But, nature has allowed for this. Blonds take far less sun to produce vitamin D than darker skinned people. The darker your skin, the more sun exposure you need for your body to produce enough vitamin D.

Of course the problem for darker skinned people is that short of working outside in the sun everyday, we just don’t have that kind of time. I can be out a good 4-6 hours before I start to burn.

The other question we need to answer is – short of dumping our daily vitamins, how to we decrease out vitamin A intake?

Vitamin A must be cheaper to make.

So, I found the answer, just not the solution…

 

 

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