We're Falling Really, Really Short On Vitamin D — Here's What You Need

If you don't know much about vitamin D beyond that it's got a cute little nickname as "the sunshine vitamin," get this: The essential nutrient, which is often boiled down to just calcium absorption and bone health, actually has a slew of crucial whole-body benefits.*

Plus, that whole "sunshine vitamin" thing might actually be a little misleading these days because relying on the sun to get enough vitamin D is not only risky business, but it's also just not realistic for most people (for a bunch of reasons).

Though a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level—aka 25(OH)D (your clinical indicator of vitamin D status)—of higher than 30 ng/ml1 is technically considered sufficient, at least 50 mg/ml is truly optimal, says mbg's director of scientific affairs Ashley Jordan Ferira, Ph.D., RDN, along with other health experts and doctors, like board-certified endocrinologist Brittany Henderson, M.D.

Here's where things get a little grim: 93 to 100% of the U.S. population4 doesn't even consume 400 I.U. of vitamin D per day via food, which means that the vast majority of us are missing that 5,000 I.U. mark by a landslide. To get there, we'd have to increase our intake more than 10 times over. (And who's eating that much fish? Can you say, "mercury"...?)

This dismal picture doesn't leave the average person with many options. Sure, you can spend more time outdoors and eat more UV-exposed mushrooms (about 7 cups per day), but taking a high-quality vitamin D supplement designed with potency and sufficiency in mind is really the only reliable way to achieve and maintain an ideal vitamin D level for life, says Ferira.* That means no underwhelming 400, 600, or 1,000 I.U. per day; you'll need 5,000 to hit that 50 ng/ml threshold.

With almost a third of Americans frankly deficient in vitamin D, the risks involved in getting more of the sunshine vitamin from the actual sun, and the fact that almost no one consumes significant amounts through our vitamin D-scant food, we're in pretty dire straits when it comes to this all-important micronutrient.