My Vitamin D Experiment
This pregnancy, I’ve intentionally not taken any Vitamin D supplements. Not because they’re dangerous, but because sunshine is better! Humans have evolved to synthesise much higher levels of vitamin D in the skin than through the diet or supplements. In fact, roughly 95% is acquired via photosynthesis in the skin, and only 5% through the diet (1). Around half an hour of sun exposure at mid-day in the summer sun will release a whopping 50,000 IU into our bodies (equivalent to 50 standard 1000iU Vitamin D capsules!).My goal at the start of my pregnancy was to get some sun on my skin, for 5-10 mins, at least 4 days a week. This is giving me the equivalent of 10000-15000iU of Vitamin D (or 10-15 capsules), most days of the week. Before anyone panics... I want to add that 5 minutes of sunshine, most days of the week, is what I would call ‘safe sun exposure’, so very little risk of burn.My Vitamin D results have come in, and (cue drum roll…) are looking great! My result was 123nmol/L. Anything over 50nmol/L is considered ‘replete’, but I like to see this number over 100nmol/L during pregnancy. Phew!
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for most pregnant women (and certainly wasn’t the case for my previous pregnancy). Between 40-70% of pregnant women are diagnosed as being deficient in Vitamin D (2). Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy is associated with:
- Rickets (softening and distortion of the bones) in children (1)
- Low Vitamin D concentrations in breast milk, resulting in a possible deficiency in the baby (1)
- Lower rates of IVF success (3)
- Maternal vitamin D deficiency may also be associated with associated childhood risk of asthma, language impairment, schizophrenia, type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis (3)
- Increased risk of pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes (4, 5)
- Increases risk of bacterial vaginosis (6)
- Infantile eczema (7)
- Childhood asthma (8)
- Poor foetal growth (9)
As you can see this is quite the list.
