The jury is still out on how much Vitamin D a day an average Indian needs to keep ailments at bay. “An average Indian with Vitamin D deficiency symptoms should be taking 60,000 IU a week in oral supplements,” says Max Healthcare endocrinologist Dr Sujeet Jha. Others, however, say the ideal dose should be an injection of 6 lakh IU of Vitamin D a week. But quite unusually, supplements prescribed for pregnant women in India, for example, are dangerously low. “There is a great debate emerging on the dose that should be given to pregnant women. Some researchers argue that it should be 10 times the amount given currently, which is only 200 IU a day, and clearly seems inadequate. Recent studies suggest that a dose of 4,000-6,000 IU a day is required to be able to raise the Vitamin D level of the mother as well as her baby to normal,” says Dr Vandana Jain, an associate professor at the department of paediatrics at AIIMS, who led a study that found a very high prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency among babies who had seizures, as well as many cases of rickets among infants as young as 2-4 months.
It’s a cause that clearly has more takers in the US, where the Vitamin D lobby seems to hold sway. However, the prescribed amount in the US is 200-600 IU a day. A furious debate is on to increase the dose to 4,000-10,000 IU a day. There are others who believe 1,000 IU daily is enough for an average adult, regardless of skin colour, and that dosage should be raised for those above 50.
