Vitamin D Absorption

Sun Protection is a fact of life™

Besides vitamin D absorption through your diet, there are many ways which you can get enough vitamin D in your life, including sun or tanning bed exposure and taking pill or liquid vitamin D supplements.

When you rely on the sun or a sun replacement like a tanning bed, your body does not absorb vitamin D so much as it produces it itself, so it is impossible to get too much.

The human body actually stops synthesizing vitamin D when it feels it has made enough for now. Vitamin supplements on the other hand can be downright complicated sometimes.

Just like any other pill or liquid based vitamin supplement, when it comes to vitamin D absorption is done primarily through the digestive tract, so you need to make sure your body has a chance to process as much out of the supplement as it can.

The best way to take vitamin D is at the same time as you take your calcium supplements, or to take it while eating calcium right foods like dairy or certain green vegetables.

Vitamin D is crucial to your body’s absorption of calcium, and it is used up during that process. This means that once your body has absorbed the calcium it needs using the vitamin D, it will have also absorbed the vitamin D.

On the flip side of that coin, in order to absorb as much vitamin D as you can, you should avoid diuretics like coffee and sodas, as well as medical diuretics.

These drugs can interfere with the calcium to vitamin D ration in your body and actually make you flush out some of those nutrients you just spent so much energy getting in to yourself.

Be careful of antacids as well, as too much of these can have the same effect. If you need to take an antacid or diuretic, just be sure to get in a little extra vitamin D to make up for the difference.

Another thing to avoid would be the use of mineral oil or any products that might contain mineral oil. This substance is often found in skin care products and can block vitamin D absorption in the body.

There are also some medications that may interfere with your body’s ability to absorb vitamin D. The most common would be cortisone as well as other steroids.

If you are worried that your medication might inhibit you from getting enough vitamin D, you can check with your doctor.

You should also talk to your doctor if you have any liver or gallbladder problems or other gastrointestinal disorders. These can also inhibit vitamin D absorption , and you will want to be aware of what you should be doing to counteract them.

In a normal, healthy person though, getting enough vitamin D should not be hard to do at all. Pill and liquid based supplements have the quantity of vitamin D clearly labeled on the bottle.

The recommended daily values are flexible enough that the amount of nutrient usually lost to the digestive process should not matter much anyway. This does not have to be rocket science and after all, vitamin D is supposed to make you feel healthy, not stressed!

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