People eating healthy food and living a healthy livestyle (outside as much as possible especially during winter, go by foot instead of driving etc.) do not need any extra vitamins at all.
If you need them you do something wrong.
A healthy livestyle improves live much more than superficial vitamins can ever do.
Depends on where you live. There are places like the Pacific NW that get very little sunlight, and going outside during the winter isn't enough to satisfy your Vitamin D needs.
The parent post was saying that the only thing necessary to get enough Vitamin D was to 'just go outside.' I'm failing to see how this validates that premise. Attempting to eat more eggs/seafood/liver to gain more Vitamin D would seem not that far off from attempting supplementation if the only reason that you're eating them is for their Vitamin D content.
Every place on earth has its own endemic health hazards. You're going to need protection strategies wherever you live. As protection strategies go, taking vitamin D pills is unusually cheap, safe and effective.
So for every place on earth a different pill?
How about adjusting lifestyle to living conditions?
Vitamin D pills are in no way a surrogate for outside activities. Those give you fresh oxygen, nature, exercise, sun and so much more than any superficial pill.
But some places don't have enough sunlight for people to get adequate vitamin D, and some people (pregnant women; people with very pale skin; children under 5) don't get enough time in the sun to get vitamin D.
Combine that with advice (which is perhaps being taken a bit too rigorously by some) to avoid skin cancer and you can understand that a few people are not getting enough vitamin D.
It's great if someone can get 15 minutes of bright sunlight every day. But if they can't there's nothing wrong with a supplement.
People living in Scotland are at risk of too little vitamin D, especially during the winter months, especially if they are fair skinned or if they wear clothing which restricts sunlight (burqas etc).
I agree that overdose is a risk. I'm not suggesting mega dosing with vitamin supplements. I'm suggesting that a few people (the few people who don't have access to 15 mins bright sunlight per day) would benefit from Vitamin D supplements.
Fair skin helps absorb vitamin D. But people with fair skin are warned more heavily about sunburn, and they tend to cover up and use sun block.
But you're right, I should have been clearer. People in Scotland (where the sun is only strong enough between April and September) with dark skin are also at risk of not enough vitamin D.
We evolved spending most of our time outdoors for most of our history, only after the industrial revolution and now the information revolution did we gradually work more and more in doors. Vitamin D deficiency is at almost epidemic proportions. Short of switching careers to a road crew, Vitamin D deficiency should be very high on the list of suspects any time the symptoms of any form of depression are observed.
Vitamin D deficiency is a symptom. What is missing is not vitamin D but sunlight. Giving superficial vitamin D is doctoring on ONE symptom not on the cause of multiple deficiencies.
A correct therapy would be for example:
* Do short ways (<2km) per foot.
* Do medium ways (< 20 km) per bicycle
* Do longer ways as a combination of public transport and foot.
* Do programming in parks, outside cafe terrace or in the garden
* Get a dog and go with him every day
* Start jogging
etc.
There are lot of possibilities to change your modern life to a for the human race suitable lifestyle.
Swallowing a pill instead of getting sun, fresh air and exercise is one way to burn out.
It takes effort to change your live instead of swallowing a pill and costs more time in the short run, but it extends lifetime and saves illness time. Therefore it saves time in the long run and makes live happier.
If you need them you do something wrong.
A healthy livestyle improves live much more than superficial vitamins can ever do.