Page 29 - Summer 2017 Journal

Vitamin D Supplementation: Panacea or Potential Problem?
By Pam Schoenfeld, MS, RDN
Vitamin D has far and away been receiving the most attention of all the vitamins, both from the medical community and from health-conscious individuals. Since the new millennium, scientific research on the relationship of vitamin D to health and disease has exploded; for example, in 2015, 13% of the budget of the Office of Dietary Supplements was spent on vitamin D research, with just 6% going to research the other twelve vitamins combined.1 Population-wide “low-levels” have even been referred to as a “vitamin D deficiency pan- demic.”2 Eighteen percent of Americans are now taking at least 1,000 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per day, up from 0.3 percent in 2000. More than three percent of adults are now taking amounts greater than 4,000 IU per day, up from 0.1% in 2007, a trend that is raising red flags
in the medical community.3,4
Today nutritionally oriented practitioners routinely recommend vitamin
D blood testing followed by supplementation, a trend that has been building over the last decade. Interest in testing surged in 2011 when the Endocrine Society published their recommendation that vitamin D levels should be no lower than 30 ng/mL.
SUMMER 2017
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