Your most important supplement is vitamin D. For both prevention and treatment of health problems, vitamin D is the place to start. Vitamin D is essential for your immune system, especially in the prevention of allergies, autoimmune disease, diabetes, and cancer. An amazing array of symptoms from headaches to tooth decay are all affected by vitamin D.
Everyone is deficient in vitamin D unless you are taking it as a supplement or you spend all day in the sun. That is because humans were meant to live in the sun in warm climates. Sun exposure to the skin produces vitamin D. Our bodies have not evolved from our hunter gatherer days, but because we no longer live in the sun we are all deficient. We live indoors, in houses, schools, and office buildings.
Most people have a vitamin D level of 10-30 ng/ml, and we need a healthy level of 40-80. The only practical way to achieve that level for most of us is to take natural vitamin D3.
For adults it usually requires a daily dose of 5,000-10,000 mg of vitamin D per day to achieve adequate blood levels. Infants need 1,000 mg per day and older children need 1,000 mg per 25 pounds of body weight.
It is also important to take vitamin K2 with vitamin D because you can become deficient in vitamin K when you take vitamin D. Vitamin K2 is necessary for bone growth, so the best vitamin D supplements also contain vitamin K. Multivitamin supplements do not contain enough vitamin D.
You can easily get a blood test to check your vitamin D status (25-hydroxy vitamin D). It is a good idea to take vitamin D supplements for at least a month and then get a test to see if the dosage is adequate to bring your vitamin D level up to at least 40. Your health care provider can order a blood test or you can order a kit for a finger stick test from ZRT Labs and do it yourself.
This is the most important blood test you can get. And don’t be fooled by the false normal levels established by labs. Most labs will specify that a normal level is 30-100. That lower level is typical for our deficient population, but it’s too low.