Is Vitamin D deficiency becoming too prevalent within our society?
There’s an excellent article here which discusses this issue in detail: Our skin evolved to create vitamin D when it’s exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. So, when most of the world’s population lived in or near equatorial regions, people had no shortfall of the nutrient, with their bodies making from 10,000 to 20,000 international units (IUs) of this vitamin each day. GOT MILK? Mandatory fortification of this drink explains why most children meet the recommended intake of vitamin D via their diet—and why so many milk-shy adults don’t. However, over the millennia, more and more people moved to high latitudes, where up to half the year, solar-UV exposure isn’t enough to fuel vitamin D production in skin. More recently, justifiable concerns about sunburns and skin cancer have prompted increasing shares of people—even at high latitudes—to don sun-blocking clothing. Unfortunately, what’s good for skin protection is bad for natural vitamin D production. It also can be bad for health
