The Best Time Of Day To Take Vitamin D, According To Expert

[Islander]

Korin Miller
September 17, 2021

Vitamin D is a crucial nutrient for our health and well-being for a number of reasons (think mood, bone health, immunity, and more).* Unfortunately, though, many of us don't get enough. Research demonstrates an alarming 93% of Americans fail to get in just 400 IU per day from their diet—and the science is abundantly clear that 400 IU doesn't even come close to cutting it, anyway.

Keep reading: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articl...ing-to-experts

[Islander]

This article from the popular press is helpful in that it promotes the main idea: most of us are deficient in this critical vitamin, and it's almost impossible to get enough from a typical diet. From there, sadly, it omits important information and misleads us about how to raise our D levels.
Clearly, it would be wise for most of us to supplement with vitamin D3, and the advice to take it with a meal that contains fat is also sound. However, I'd avoid purchasing from any random discount pharmacy or supermarket; reliable sources of quality products are available online.
A blatant omission is the need for vitamin K2 to accompany your dosage of D. K2 (MK-7) activates the protein, osteocalcin, which integrates calcium into bone. Vitamin D enhances the absorption of calcium and vitamin K direction where it is needed, rather than allow it to deposit in soft tissues like arteries, where it can do considerable damage.
Finally, the article warns that you cannot possibly reach a satisfactory level of vitamin D simply by sun exposure. This is wrong, wrong, wrong! Let's clarify, though. Sun exposure is safe in the window between 10 AM and 2 PM (two hours either side of solar noon) when you are receiving UVBs, the beneficial rays of the sun. Before and after that window, you are increasingly exposed to UVAs, the dangerous rays that penetrate deep into your skin, increasing wrinkles and leathery appearance, and have been associated with melanoma. When your shadow is longer than you are tall, it's time to cover up or seek shade.
Just FTR, I monitor my vitamin D level about every 18 months. I aim for an ideal of 70 to 80 ng/mL, much of which I get through sun exposure in the summer months, when I garden in the nude during that noon window. But one day I really got into "the zone," as they say, and later when I checked my level, it was up to 107! Historically, there has never been evidence of an overdose of vitamin D, but you can be sure that I took a little break from the sunshine after that notice.

[Maurya]

Thanks for cutting to the chase, Islander.

[Julieanne]

The hours between 10.00am and 2.00pm are the very ones I avoid! Perhaps in Maine, but not here in our hot,dry state. I would fry to a crisp if I ventured outside. I have to do my gardening activities early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the heat is bearable.

[grulla]

Do keep in mind that 10-2 are the optimum summertime hours where the UVBs are not filtered and/or refracted by a poor sun angle, as well as being compromised by clouds and haze. A satellite weather map can be very useful to expose that "invisible" haze. If you use the 45*-50* minimum horizon sun angle, as opposed to the limited 10-2 time constraints, you will find that method provides for better (semi) year 'round safe tanning. A simple protractor on a level surface with an attached thin hollow tube for shadow casting works quite well.

[Julieanne]

I'm not really talking about tanning or vitamin D, it's just too damned hot! Five minutes outside in summer and I'm sweating - I can't handle extreme heat.

[grulla]

I empathize, since I'm basically a cold weather person. However, for the sake of other forum members, I neglected to mention that one should only tan for no more than 10 minutes (on each side) until only a little pinking of the skin occurs. One does not want to get sunburned, which defeats the entire idea of generating Vit D through safe tanning.

[Maurya]

As I live in the tropics, between the equator and the tropic of cancer, I do spend most of my time outdoors, with as little clothing as possible. Due to our longitudinal position within our time zone, the hours between about 10:30 AM and about 2:30 PM are best for catching UVB rays. For my yard work, however, I do try to get most of it done before 10 AM, as it becomes too warm for strenuous activity after that time. My skin certainly is exposed to the sunshine for way more than 10 minutes at a time, and I never have gotten sunburned. If I were a tourist coming here from the north, it would be a different story. Each individual is different, and there can be no one size fits all prescription for every possible skin type.

[Islander]

And keep in mind also, Grulla, that Julieanne lives in Australia, closer than any of us to the thin oz0ne layer where sun's rays are most intense and most potentially harmful. She's pretty savvy so I think she knows enough to cover up during morning and afternoon hours and supplement with vitamin D3.

[grulla]

.......... Due to our longitudinal position within our time zone, the hours between about 10:30 AM and about 2:30 PM are best for catching UVB rays. For my yard work, however, I do try to get most of it done before 10 AM, as it becomes too warm for strenuous activity after that time.......

That reminds me, I always try to safe tan within 2 hours BEFORE noon rather than 2 hours AFTER noon, as the sun's angle and radiant energy may be the same between the two, but the morning convective air temperatures are always a bit cooler then the afternoon air temperatures, making tanning in the heat of the SW desert mountain summers a bit more tolerable. But when the summer monsoons finally arrive, all that becomes moot.

[grulla]

And keep in mind also, Grulla, that Julieanne lives in Australia, closer than any of us to the thin oz0ne layer where sun's rays are most intense and most potentially harmful. She's pretty savvy so I think she knows enough to cover up during morning and afternoon hours and supplement with vitamin D3.

Also keep in mind that the sun angle method I described above might uncover the fact that one can tan earlier or later in cooler weather in the spring and/or autumn, or possibly even in the winter, especially when living closer to the equator.