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what's very interesting is that observational studies where you look at people who have low vitamin d and you look and see what type of outcomes they have suggested that there's an increased risk of heart attacks or strokes of heart failure and even of dying in those individuals that have low vitamin d so every British is actually at risk for vitamin d deficiency because of our lifestyle we're spending a lot more times indoors rather than outdoors we wear sunscreen regularly which we should reduce our risk of skin cancer but that puts us at higher risk of vitamin d deficiency and then there are also certain populations that are particularly high at risk. Read more: Best Vitamin D Supplement UK So as you get older your ability to synthesize vitamin d from sunlight starts to go down if you're obese as up to 40 of British are then, of course, that excess fat can also affect your ability to activate and synthesize vitamin d women actually have a higher incidence of vitamin d deficiency compared to men partly driven by the fact that they tend to have more body fat compared to men and partly driven by the fact that women actually wear more sunscreen than men do and they're more compliant with that and of course if you have dark skin or pigment in your skin that can also affect your skin's ability to absorb vitamin d so pretty much all British are at risk for vitamin d deficiency but there are some that are particularly high risk that needs to pay close attention to their vitamin d levels so vitamin d supplementation for a large proportion of British is probably recommended because the average British is likely to be vitamin d deficient. What is recommended is usually about 1 000 to 2000 international units or IU's per day now for some people that may not be enough if they're severely vitamin d deficient specifically if your levels are below 30 then you may need to talk to your doctor about getting higher dose vitamin supplementation almost like a loading dose to get you up to speed and then you could switch to that lower maintenance dose of 1000 to 2000 I use daily but what's very interesting is that studies published in the journal of the British medical association have shown that even though lower vitamin d is associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes and risk of dying vitamin d supplementation in and of itself doesn't necessarily negate that risk. So it's a little bit of something that still has scientists scratching their head because we're not entirely clear what the relationship is we know that low vitamin d is bad and it you know can and it's associated with increased risk but vitamin d supplementation doesn't always negate that risk so the way I like to think about vitamin d is really like a marker of risk so absolutely it's important to replete your vitamin d if it's low but realize that you may still be at high risk and you may still need to aggressively reduce your other risk factors for heart disease in order to try to minimize your risk of developing adverse outcomes so the thing with vitamin d deficiency. It's not going to really present with symptoms it's not going to tap you on the shoulder and tell you your vitamin d deficient so you really have to go looking for it and the best way to know if you're vitamin d deficient is to get a blood test that measures your vitamin d it's called a 25 hydroxy vitamin d level and that's a really good way to know exactly what your state of health is nine health offers low cost screenings to be able to measure your vitamin d level it's a quick blood test and it'll tell you a lot about not just your vitamin d but in general about your risk of heart disease and your nutritional status