Body+Soul Magazine’s Top 10 Tips for Healthy Aging — featured on NBC’s Today Show Tuesday — included getting more vitamin D, yet another national media story on the value of “the sunshine vitamin” this year.

Terri Trespicio, senior editor of Body+Soul magazine told Today that vitamin D is a great defense against age-related illness and disease and that most of us — who wear sunscreen or spend too much time indoors — don’t make enough vitamin D.

MSNBC.com follows up on the story by adding, “Indeed, a large study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people with the lowest blood levels of D had a higher risk of dying from all causes during the median 7.7-year study period. Other recent research reports similar results. Additional studies indicate vitamin D may help protect against cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, certain cancers, and some auto-immune disorders.”

Disappointingly, the web site downplays the body’s true vitamin D source by saying, “Dietary sources of D include fish, eggs, and fortified milk; our bodies also make D in response to sunlight,” MSNBC reported.

Sunlight is the natural and intended way to make vitamin D — a suntan gives you 100 times more vitamin D than an 8-ounce glass of whole milk.