
Vitamin D helps you absorb calcium, which of course helps to build and maintain strong bones. “Most multivitamins have vitamin D, so that is one way to do it,” she says. The study found that most people do not need to take a vitamin D supplement to avoid being deficient, but that it’s safe to take 1000-2000 IU a day as a type of insurance. Manson is one of the directors of the ginormous and ongoing VITAL study, which is looking at whether taking vitamin D3 or omega-3 fatty acid supplements reduce the risk of various major conditions.

That’s why it’s “very reasonable,” to take a supplement to be sure, says JoAnn Manson, M.D., MPH, DrPH, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.ĭr. That may be because many of them got added vitamin D from sun exposure - aside from consuming it through supplements or food, your body makes its own vitamin D when it’s exposed to the sun.īut you can’t get all you need through sun exposure alone (especially because we all need to be protecting ourselves from the sun's damaging rays) and you may not be getting what you need through the food you eat. Weirdly, that doesn’t mean many Americans are truly deficient in it - when participants in the ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey ( NHANES) had their blood levels tested, just 5% were at risk of deficiency. Which is why people are curious about the best time to take probiotics and vitamins - in particular vitamin D, a nutrient that most people in the United States do not consume enough of, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

There’s no point in spending money on extra vitamins and minerals if they're not going to get absorbed that well, or you’re just going to pee it out. We get it - if you’re going to the trouble of swallowing your daily supplements, you want to know the best time of day to take it. What Time Should You Take Vitamin D PeopleImages - Getty Images
