Highlights
- Our body needs Vitamin D for strong bones, teeth, strong muscles.
- Vitamin D supplements of 10mcg per day is suggested during winter as sunlight exposure for Vitamin D is minimal.
- The supplement dose does not have any preventive role for heart disease or muscle weakness.
During spring and summer, most people get enough vitamin D from sunlight on their skin and their diet. But in autumn and winter, when exposure to sunshine is minimal, the only source is from a limited range of foods such as oily fish, egg yolk, red meat, liver, fortified breakfast cereals and fat spreads.
As such, Public Health England advises that everyone should consider a 10 microgram daily vitamin D supplement of during these months. Based on a comprehensive search of published evidence, Associate Professor Bolland and colleagues make the case that existing clinical trials show that vitamin D supplementation does not improve musculoskeletal outcomes, such as falls or fractures.
In light of the uncertainty, they suggest people at high risk should be counselled about sunlight exposure and diet, and low dose vitamin D supplements considered on an individual basis. "Otherwise we conclude that current evidence does not support the use of vitamin D supplementation to prevent disease."
Dr Louis Levy, head of nutrition science at Public Health England, says advice to take a vitamin D supplement of 10 micrograms a day is backed by a Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) review of the evidence on musculoskeletal health outcomes.
He argues that taking 10 micrograms of vitamin D daily to prevent musculoskeletal ill health "is unlikely to result in harmful levels of vitamin D" and says getting enough vitamin D is particularly important "because poor musculoskeletal health remains in the top 10 causes of disability adjusted life years."
Although vitamin D treatment still has a role in people with proved deficiency or in high risk groups, "the rest of us should avoid being 'treated' for this pseudo disease, save scarce NHS resources, and focus on having a healthy lifestyle, sunshine, and a diversity of real food."
Source-Medindia