If you’re looking for the best vitamin D supplements to buy this year, then you’ve come to the right place. You can also get more info by jumping to our Vitamin D Supplements Guide.
Top 10 Vitamin D Supplements
| #1 |  |
Carlson Labs Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #2 |  |
NOW Foods Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #3 |  |
Nordic Naturals Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #4 |  |
Doctor’s Best Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #5 |  |
Nutrigold Vitamin D3 Gold 2000 IU | More Info |
| #6 |  |
Nature Made Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #7 |  |
Solgar Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #8 |  |
Do Vitamins Daily D | More Info |
| #9 |  |
Nature’s Way Vitamin D3 | More Info |
| #10 |  |
GNC Vitamin D3 | More Info |
Vitamin D Supplements Guide
What is Vitamin D?
Doctors are finding that vitamin D is more than just the sunshine vitamin. The vitamin also plays a role in regulating hormones. There are two forms of vitamin D, with Vitamin D-3 being the form that people will be most interested in. Vitamin D-3 actually presents itself in the body at the molecular level like a hormone and behaves in the body just like a hormone.
Vitamin D is instrumental in facilitating hormone receptor activity and helping hormones do what they’re supposed to do in the body. Hormone cofactors become critically important when we don’t have certain nutrients in our bodies that it needs. Hormone cofactors like vitamin D are therefore essential to certain populations of people (like those receiving hormone replacement therapy). Your body needs vitamin D to move its hormones through the cell walls.
It’s critically important for people to optimize their vitamin D levels. The problem is that people have been told for so many years that the sun is bad. We’ve all learned that the sun is what causes skin cancer. But if you look out your window, you’ll also see the vibrancy of nature. It was the sun that created all those flowers and the greens that various creatures feed off of.
Life is flourishing because of the sun, and it’s to our own detriment that we’ve been increasingly leading lives that are sheltered from the sun. Nobody is saying that you should stay out in the sun until you get a sunburn or a get a super dark tan. The point is to get ten to fifteen minutes of sun exposure to “inject” your body with some natural vitamin D.
Vitamin D can help prevent a broad range of diseases. The most important conditions that it helps fight include cancer and heart disease. People who have Vitamin D levels under 60 ng/mL (nanograms per milliliter) in the blood have an approximately five-fold increased risk of cancer risk and a heightened risk of heart disease of between two and three-fold.
Benefits of Vitamin D
Vitamin D deficiency is a crucial issue for people trying to optimize their health. The average levels that people usually see for vitamin D are between 20 – 100 ng/mL after they get it measured at a lab.
There are benefits to increasing the amount of vitamin D for those who are deficient. Between 30 – 50 ng/mL, people are going to get osteoporotic benefits:
- You’ll avoid diseases like rickets.
- It will help regulate calcium in the body.
Getting your blood level of vitamin D between 50 – 80 ng/mL is the ideal optimized vitamin D level. Once you get in the range of between 50 and 80, the hormonal regulation benefits of vitamin D become more pronounced. At this level, vitamin D starts to become a health elixir.
- It’s been shown to treat many different forms of cancer.
- It’s able to help prevent cardiovascular disease and regulate blood pressure.
- It can help us ward off Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease.
- It can protect us from autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia.
- Optimizing your vitamin D levels can also help prevent diabetes and obesity that often leads to diabetes.
- There are many psychological benefits to optimizing your vitamin D levels. Psychological afflictions such as seasonal effective disorder (a type of depression that many people in northern climates get in the winter) are often the result of a vitamin D deficit that starts to accelerate in the wintertime.
Are There any Side Effects?
Vitamin D supplementation carries with it a few caveats that consumers should be wary of.
- When you supplement vitamin D, it will increase calcium absorption in the blood. An increase in calcium absorption can lead to a general “hardening” of different areas of your body. This might include calcifications of the heart that leads to an increased risk for coronary and heart diseases.
- Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin. This means that it builds up and isn’t metabolized nearly as rapidly as other vitamins. If a person takes too much of it, they can incur vitamin D toxicity.
- People who use vitamin D supplements should stay within the limitations set forth by the National Academy of Sciences. Do not take mega doses of vitamin D.
- Be sure to check with a doctor or nutritionist when taking vitamin D. Some consequences of over-supplementation of vitamin D includes kidney stones, a condition known as renal calcinosis and other long-term stresses on the body that might not show up in lab tests.
One has to be alert to stay away from potentially dangerous side effects while trying to get benefits from D supplementation.
How to Take Vitamin D
Doctors regularly prescribe supplemental vitamin D when levels patients have low levels that need improving. If you suspect that you’re vitamin D deficient, then you might be wondering how much you should be taking daily? You should first get your vitamin D levels checked at a lab under the supervision of a doctor. If it’s not practical to get your vitamin D levels checked by a doctor, you can use a vitamin D testing kit that has been approved by the Vitamin D Council.
The best way to get vitamin D is from the sun, but many people are averse to sun exposure for a variety of reasons. It’s questionable whether people working in offices have the time to step out in the middle of the day to optimize their vitamin D levels. Although this is possible in the summertime, people usually have other obligations that make opportunities for getting sunshine rarer and rarer. Another problem is how much sunscreen people put on their skin in the summer. Sunscreen will block vitamin D synthesis from happening. If this is the case, supplementation can be a savior for avoiding D deficiency in the summertime and the wintertime.
The best way to get vitamin D is in supplement form. The Vitamin D Council suggests that adults should take a daily dose of 5,000 IUs. In certain cases, your doctor might recommend a dose of up to 10,000 IUs depending on how low your levels are. Vitamin D dosages for children should be between 1,000 – 2,000 IUs a day.
You should ideally check your vitamin D levels in the fall (where it should be at its highest level) and check it again in March (where it should be at the lowest levels). By knowing what your highs and lows are, you can make a pretty good guess as to how much supplementation you’ll need to carry you through the year. Doctors routinely see people with vitamin D levels at the low end of the scale. These people have an average vitamin D level between 20 and 50 ng/mL. The vast majority of the studies show that fifty percent of Americans are deficient in vitamin D.
Vitamin D can be taken at any time during the day. You can take it with or without food, and the vitamin will eventually be absorbed by the lower portion of the small intestines.
What to Look for in a Good Vitamin D Supplement
Many consumers want to know the best vitamin D-3 supplement to take for their health. There’s a key vitamin called vitamin K-2 that is important to take with vitamin D supplementation. Vitamin K-2 moves calcium from the places it doesn’t belong to the bones and teeth where it’s needed. Vitamin K-2 is a relatively rare compound in nature. It’s not the same as vitamin K-1 that’s been found in green leafy vegetables. Vitamin K-2 is found mostly in fermented foods. If you don’t eat much sauerkraut or tempeh, then you’re going to need to supplement your vitamin D-3 intake with vitamin K-2 supplements. Jarrow’s Bone Up is an example of a supplement that has vitamin K-2 along with vitamin D-3 in it.
You can use vitamin D supplements daily, especially during the winter, for a couple months and then get tested. You’ll want to shoot for a vitamin D level between 60 and 70 nanograms per milliliter. That’s a reachable goal range to stay within during the winter and summer months. Getting to this level might mean more sun in the summer (and less vitamin D supplementation) and more supplementation in the winter to make up for the lack of sun. Your overall goal should be to keep your vitamin D levels optimized throughout the year.
Having a proper vitamin D level is essential to help yourself combat chronic diseases like inflammation, obesity and sub-optimal hormone utilization. Certain people who are under a lot of stress get pain their joints and store an excess amount of fat. Their mood might become unstable as they cycle through bouts of depression and anxiety. What’s worse, these conditions can impact people’s sleep at night, making their condition even worse. The sun made sure that we didn’t get these kinds of chronic health conditions. And if you aren’t getting enough sun, make sure you take supplemental vitamin D.
The post 10 Best Vitamin D Supplements – Reviewed & Ranked for 2017 appeared first on Supplement Hound - Supplement Reviews for 2016.
from Supplement Hound – Supplement Reviews for 2016 http://supplementhound.com/best-vitamin-d-supplements/
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