Travel, fitness and health magazine Men’s Journal is one of many publications covering the recent calls by vitamin D experts for the Institute of Medicine to raise the Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamin D by more than 10 times its current value.

“The reason we’re severely lacking vitamin D nowadays, much more so than even our parents were, is because we’re missing out on the number-one source of vitamin D: the sun,” reporter Melaina Juntti writes, before quoting Vitamin D Council founder John Cannell, saying, “Vitamin D is a pro-hormone made in the skin upon exposure to sunlight, and production of it is rapid and robust. Within 10 to 20 minutes without wearing sunscreen, people make between 10,000 and 20,000 IU. But because of widespread sunscreen use, total sun avoidance, and our increasingly indoor lifestyles, our vitamin D levels have fallen drastically.”

In February, Robert. P. Heaney, M.D., Creighton University wrote about confirming the previous conclusion of two researchers who last year found that the IOM had made “a serious miscalculation error” in determining the RDA for Vitamin D.

In March, the journal Nutrients published a letter from Heaney and his colleagues Cedric Garland , Carole Baggerly, Christine French and Edward Gorham, saying approximately 7000 IU/day will safely achieve and maintain a vitamin D serum level of 20 ng/ml, the low end of the IOM’s designation of adequacy. The current RDA from the IOM is just 600 IU/day. They also note that the higher optimum levels recommended by groups like The Endocrine Society and GrassrootsHealth would likely require even higher daily intake to achieve.

“We call for the NAS-IOM and all public health authorities concerned with transmitting accurate nutritional information to the public to designate, as the RDA, a value of approximately 7,000 IU/day from all sources,” wrote Dr. Heaney and colleagues.

Click here to read the article from Men’s Journal.

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