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Home Articles REAL Health Must Have Supplements Is Your Child's Vitamin D Optimal?
Is Your Child's Vitamin D Optimal? Print E-mail
Written by Susan McCreadie, MD   
The best laboratory indicator of adequate vitamin D is serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25-OH vitamin D) [1]. There is no universal consensus on the optimal 25(OH) -D level for health. Though most agree,
 
< 20 ng/mL = deficiency
< 30 ng/mL = insufficiency
 
The question remains, what is optimal for infants and adolescents?
Current studies suggest > 50 ng/mL = optimal. [2]
 
Most children that I test are below 50 ng/mL!!! 
 
Things to Remember:
  • Very few foods contain vitamin D naturally (fatty fish and eggs are the exception)
  • The major sources of vitamin D is UVB sunlight exposure, which allows the skin to make vitamin D
  • The liver and the kidneys are required to turn the inactive form of vitamin D to the active form of vitamin D
  • So vitamin D deficiency can be caused from:
    • low sun exposure (watch the sunscreen! – use it to avoid sunburns – and remember choose a safer sun-screen)
    • low intake of vitamin D foods
    • malabsorption of fat (vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin)
    • impaired liver or kidney function
    • rarely, genetic defects causing the organs to be unresponsive to the vitamin D

Not all vitamin D is created equal.
Vitamin D2 which is often added to foods to “fortify” them, is not as bio-available as the D3 form.
Vitamin D3 is found to be 3 times as effective in raising the level and maintaining the level of active vitamin D in the bloodstream.  So relying on fortified foods is not a great way to maintain healthy levels of vitamin D in the body. Two great ways to support your child's vitamin D level are ”unprotected” sun exposure (without burning) and a teaspoon of Arctic-D Cod Liver Oil daily. Pretty simple!
 
Susan McCreadie, MD is a Holistic Pediatrician and co-founder of nourishMD. She shows parents how to find REAL health for their child, so they can stop treating their child's symptoms and instead find solutions that help their child heal from the inside out.
 
Sources:
 
1. Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine. (1997) Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Vitamin D, and Fluoride. National Academies Press, Washington DC, 2000. p. 250-287. 
2. Pazirandeh, MD, S and Burns, MD, D. Overview of vitamin D. UptoDate.com Last literature review version 17.1: January 2009