vit D and time of year

November 3, 2008 at 2:26 pm | | literature, science@home

With the shorter days of winter fast approaching (in my hemisphere, at least), we should all be concerned with getting enough vitamin D.

In a recent paper (Kazantzidis, et al. Calculations of the human vitamin D exposure from UV spectral measurements at three European stationsPhotochem. Photobiol. Sci. 2009), some scientists measured the UV doses in some European cities. The plot below looks at seasonal UV doses—converted to vitamin D effective dose (VDED)—averaged over 10-15 years.

Note the log scale on the y axis.

The blue line is somewhere in Greece, lattitude around 41 ºN, which is north of San Francisco. That means I get the most vitamin D in the summer, and more than an order of magnitude less in the winter.

So maybe I should take a supplement?

3 Comments »

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  1. Chances are that your soy milk is fortified with Vitamin D, and you are getting plenty.

    Comment by jordan — November 4, 2008 #

  2. I had my Vitamin D checked this fall because of a past history of Seasonal Affective Disorder and it was 24 out of a range of 20-100 (I love that they didn’t give any units… I assume it’s ng/mL).

    Anyway, I started taking 2,000 IUs of Vitamin D per day and using my sun lamp for half hour every morning and damn, I can’t remember ever feeling this good at the beginning of November before. I am a Vit D convert.

    Comment by katie — November 4, 2008 #

  3. Oh, and I live at about 48 degrees N latitude. (Is that the correct way of stating latitude?)

    Comment by katie — November 4, 2008 #

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