Making Sure You Have Enough Vitamin D In Your System

Making Sure You Have Enough Vitamin D In Your System

LiveJournal Tags: Dr. Jerry Teplitz,vitamin deficiency,disease prevention,vitamin d3,vitamin levels,hydroxyvitamin d,diasorin,quest tests

As I’ve reported before, Vitamin D is becoming more and more important in disease prevention and healing. We are also discovering that many of us are deficient in Vitamin D.

Even though your own body can create it by being out in the sun without sunscreen, most of us spend very little time in the sun. This means we need to consider taking supplemental Vitamin D3 (D3 absorbs the best).

So how do you determine what level of Vitamin D you have in your body? You can get a baseline measurement by having a blood test, but you need to make sure your doctor is requesting the right one.

The best blood test is called 25(OH)D which translates to 25-hydroxyvitamin D. For optimum health your results should be higher than the normal range. Normal is 20-56 mg/ml, while optimal is 45-50 mg/ml. Also, make sure your level is never below 32 mg/ml.

Finally, ask what analysis system the lab is using. One testing method called the Quest system gives false results that appear to be 25-40% higher than the better test, the DiaSorin assay, which is available at LabCorp. In addition, the LabCorp test costs less than half of the Quest test.

So…get your Vitamin D level measured make sure it’s the right test and it’s being done via the right method.