by Kate McKee

Created on: November 05, 2009   Last Updated: November 26, 2009

Are you Vitamin D deficient? There's a good chance that you might be one of the one billion people in the world who are. Conservative estimates indicate that over 40% of the American population have low levels of Vitamin D. If you live on a Northern latitude, your chances are even higher than that. A recent study from the University of Calgary in Canada indicated that a worrying 97% of Canadians are Vitamin D deficient at certain times of the year. If you have dark skin, your chances of deficiency are also very high. Studies have indicated that almost all Americans of African and Mexican origin are deficient in Vitamin D. If you are over fifty, you are more likely than not to be deficient. If your baby is exclusively breastfed, he or she will be deficient.

What are the problems associated with deficiency? There are many. The link between breast cancer and Vitamin D deficiency is so strong that a delegate at a conference on Vitamin D deficiency which was held in Toronto last week claimed that breast cancer risk can be 'virtually eradicated' by elevating a woman's Vitamin D levels. And it's not just breast cancer. In 2009 alone, there were over 3000 academic research papers on Vitamin D, which have connected it with the prevention of over twenty different forms of cancer, cardiovascular disease and multiple sclerosis. Vitamin D deficiency has also been associated with Type 1 diabetes, depression, schizophrenia, and more recently with increased susceptibility to swine flu and seasonal influenza.

So, why are the statistics for deficiency so high? The problem with Vitamin D is that it is very hard to get enough of it from your diet. Although it is present in small quantities in certain foods such as cod liver oil, oily fish, eggs and mushrooms, and added to foods such as cereals, milk and yogurt as a fortification, it is almost impossible to eat enough of these foods to get adequate amounts.

In fact, the only natural way to ensure that you get enough Vitamin D into your system is to expose yourself to direct sunlight, specifically to UVB rays. Experts have estimated that in order to produce enough Vitamin D, you need to be directly exposed to sunlight for 30 minutes, twice a week. And therein lies the problem: as we all know, direct exposure to UVB rays can kill you. The sunscreens that you need to use to protect against skin cancer will block 95% of the UVB rays, preventing Vitamin D synthesis. And there are other issues, too. Cloud cover blocks 50% of UVB rays.

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