Vitamin D

To take or not to take?

Note: This article reflects my experience and views as of 2018. My life has changed a lot since then, but my attitude toward vitamin D hasn’t.

These days you can’t escape the buzz about vitamin D — how essential it is for health in general, and especially for women’s well-being and appearance. The story goes that everyone in Russia (and not just Russia) is chronically deficient. To get enough from the sun, they say, you’d have to live somewhere in Africa and sunbathe yourself to charcoal every single day.

And yes, every day — because, according to the latest research, vitamin D doesn’t actually build up in the body. The conclusion? Drink up! You’re deficient! Keep taking more!

I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, or biochemist. Just an ordinary person living in a not-so-sunny part of Russia. I’ve never taken synthetic vitamin D — well, aside from what might be hidden in multivitamins, but I don’t take those often, and experts agree the dosage there is tiny.

My seaside vacations happen once a year, for a couple of weeks in early July. I don’t obsessively hide from the sun, but I don’t bake for hours either. From 11 to 4 I use sunscreen and usually stay in the shade. With my fair skin, tanning to a crisp is simply impossible.

According to what “they” say, people like me usually show a very low vitamin D level, far below what’s considered normal.

So I decided to get tested. In November. In gray, sunless St. Petersburg November — the perfect time to see how bad it was. And the result? Normal. Somehow, my body had found its own way to get and store vitamin D.

But the internet professors insist tests can’t be trusted. They say you should supplement anyway, because overdosing is almost impossible.

Then why do the official instructions for clinically tested vitamin D supplements list the symptoms of overdose in great detail…?

Oh right. Pharma is big business. No secret there.

Conclusion

If you’re unsure, just get tested. Yes, the test is pricey, but the clarity is worth it: you’ll know for sure whether to take vitamin D or not.

For me, the result was a huge relief — not in money saved, but in time and mental energy. I learned to trust how my body manages it, and I stopped worrying about what others insisted I “should” do.

Maybe I’m a rare exception…? I doubt it.

The original Russian version of this article was published on September 6, 2018.