January 29, 2021
A vitamin D status test can help you and your healthcare team tell if you d benefit from a supplement.
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Vitamin D is important to the health of every system in the body, and yet many people do not get the recommended amount. “Many, many Americans almost half are vitamin D deficient,” says David O. Meltzer, MD, PhD, the chief of hospital medicine at University of Chicago Medicine. “But we know that in excess of three quarters of people with darker skin, including African Americans and Hispanics, are vitamin D deficient.”
Now a new spotlight has been trained on that racial gap, with emerging research into possible associations between vitamin D deficiency and the risk of serious COVID-19 disease, including a study led by Dr. Meltzer. Celebrities such as Tyler Perry and Angela Bassett have joined a chorus of voices seeking to publicize these potential links. Meanwhile, other research suggests that current standards used in testi