Optimizing your vitamin D to a level between 50 nanograms per milliliter and 80 ng/mL is probably one of the simplest, least expensive and most foundational strategies to sustain your health. In Europe and Canada, the blood level you’re looking for is 150 to 200 nanomoles per liter.
If for whatever reason you can’t get enough sun exposure to reach that ideal level, consider taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement. As a rule, adults who don’t get sun exposure will need about 8,000 IUs a day. If you’re obese, you’ll want to increase that a little bit, because vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin, so it’s easily stored in your fat.
That said, sun exposure also has several other health benefits that are unrelated to vitamin D production — and which cannot be obtained by swallowing a vitamin D supplement.
For example, the near-infrared rays in sunlight create structured water, also known as EZ water, which acts a bit like a battery, in that it gets charged with energy. This structured gel-like water is important for cellular integrity. It also enhances the ability of red blood cells to flow through your capillaries. It also plays an important role in the energy distribution within your body.
Another major health benefit of sun exposure is the production of melatonin in your mitochondria. This too is produced by the near-infrared in sunlight. Melatonin is a profoundly effective antioxidant, but it also causes your body to produce other endogenous antioxidants, such as glutathione.
It’s important to have high quantities of subcellular mitochondrial melatonin to help regulate your body’s oxidative stress. You can learn more about this from my interview with Dr. Russel Reiter.
Sunlight also allows vitamin A to be converted into retinoids, which is the active form, and vitamin A is almost as important as vitamin D. Another hormone that’s important is testosterone. If you get sufficient sun exposure it will increase your testosterone levels. Men obviously have and need more testosterone, but it’s also an important sex hormone for women.