To Vitamin D or Not to Vitamin D? That Is the Question No One Can Seem to Answer

So for a while there earlier this year, we were all, “Ohmigod, I need more Vitamin D!” after a guest of the distinguished Dr. Oz recommended megadoses of 10,000 IU a day. Then the government told us ladies to stop taking low doses of D to prevent broken bones, since such doses don’t work. But what about high doses to prevent breaks? And cancer? And megadoses to ward off tuberculosis and HIV? What about breast cancer?

Head spinning yet? Too bad, because the newest study of all says you’ll live longer if you have low levels of vitamin D.

According to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dutch researchers studied almost 400 families with nonagenarian members—those who live to be 90 or more—measuring their D levels as they varied with the seasons and controlling for, among other factors, tanning-bed use, vitamin supplementation, kidney function, age and sex. They found that the kids of nonagenarians who had at least one nonagenarian sibling had lower levels of vitamin D than the study’s control group, and that those kids were less likely to have a common genetic variation that tends to raise a person’s levels of the vitamin. The scientists think the long-lived low-vitaminers may harbor more of an “aging suppressor” protein. They add, of course, that further studies are needed.

Yeah. We’re sure more studies will clear things up.