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The world’s leading independent vitamin D advocacy group is reporting on its web site that 6,000 IU of vitamin D daily would be required to get 98 percent of the population up to vitamin D levels it now considers “sufficient” — a dosage that is 15 times higher than the current median recommendation and is only naturally consistent with getting regular sun exposure.

GrassRootsHealth.org — the organization the rounded 41 of the world’s leading vitamin D researchers into supporting the same vitamin D recommendations — is now reporting that data collected from more than 1,000 people show that current vitamin D recommendations won’t do anything to solve the vitamin D deficiency epidemic.

According to GrassRootsHealth.org, at 1,000 IU daily — more than double the current recommendation — vitamin D levels in test subjects still range from a low of 15 ng/ml to 85 ng/ml. The group considers 15 ng/ml “severe deficiency”.

“6,000 IU/day would get 98 percent of the group above 40 ng/ml,” GrassRootsHealth.org reported on its web site. “At 10,000 IU/day, no one was above 200 ng/ml (a level considered to anticipate toxicity).”

GrassRootsHealth promotes that it has the world’s largest ongoing testing project, with more than 1,000 subjects conducting vitamin D tests twice annually. The organization was founded by breast cancer survivor Carole Baggerly, who supports regular vitamin D testing for all and vitamin D production from all sources.

The numbers reported by the organization are concerning, because new vitamin D recommendations from a government panel are anticipated to be out later this month and there is already widespread speculation that the panel making the recommendations will settle for a number around 1,000 IU. The GrassRootsHealth numbers indicate that would not seriously address the problem.

Vitamin D is called “The Sunshine Vitamin” because it is made naturally when skin is exposed to sunlight — the only vitamin made naturally without ingesting dietarily. A single tanning session in summer sun or in a sunbed with both UVB and UVA light (more than 90 percent of sunbeds meet this criteria) will make more than 10,000 IU of vitamin D in the skin, according to independent research. No dietary source comes anywhere close to UV-induced vitamin D from sunlight. An 8-ounce glass of vitamin D fortified whole milk contains 100 IU of vitamin D. Fresh salmon from the stream might contain up to 1,000 IU, but that amount is not present in store-bought fatty fish, according to vitamin D expert Dr. Michael Holick.

“Working on a tan is analogous to training muscles; both, if done in moderation and reasonably, serve a worthwhile purpose.”

— Dr. Bernard Ackerman, founder of the New York City-based Ackerman Academy of Dermatopathology and author of The Sun and the ‘Epidemic’ of Melanoma: Myth on Myth. Ackerman, decorated by the American Academy of Dermatology with the group’s Master Dermatologist designation (its highest honor), is one of several dermatology leaders who take issue with dermatology organizations who attempt to characterize tans as damage.

Tans are different fundamentally from sunburns, Ackerman points out. “A sunburn is pathologic, it calling forth redness at the least, ulcerations and scarring at worst, and blisters in between. A suntan is physiologic, the result of normal melanocytes at the dermoedidermal junctions producing more melanin for the epidermis, that dark pigment serving to protect against ultraviolet radiation.”

In his Myth on Myth book, Ackerman quotes Newcastle University Professor of Dermatology Dr. Sam Shuster, summing up tans as part of nature’s design: “The dogma, now fossilized in print, is that any tan is a sign of skin damage. Tell that to Darwin.”