In Order to Get the Right Amount of Vitamin D Can I Just Sit Outside in the Sun or Do I Have to Take a Daily Pill?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
Dr. David Brady explains that vitamin D is chemically identical whether from sun, food, or supplements, but sun exposure alone rarely works. Clothing, latitude, and season block enough UV that most people further from the equator end up deficient, linked to higher rates of autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis.
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In order to get the Right Amount of Vitamin D, Can I just sit outside in the sun or do I have to take a daily pill? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert Margot in order to get the right amount of vitamin D, can I just sit outside in the sun or do I have to take a daily pill? Hey, it's JJ and today I've got integrative medicine practitioner and researcher Dr. David Brady with me to answer this question. He has a super fun position as the medical director of FX Chocolates. This is a fair trade dark chocolate with therapeutic amounts of targeted nutrients. If you want a delicious way to take your supplements, FX Chocolate is keto, sugar free and makes you feel great. And when David's not seeing patients or advising on chocolate, he can be found drumming with his rock and roll band. We'll be right back with the answer. Stay tuned.
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That'S an interesting question. Gotten that a couple of times. Don't get it a lot, but I have gotten it a couple times and it's a good question. In the end, chemically, vitamin D is vitamin D. There's a couple different forms of vitamin D. There's the 25 hydroxy vitamin D and the 125 hydroxy vitamin D. And don't really want to get into those nuances of biochemistry here, but suffice it to say that vitamin D is vitamin D. So vitamin D3, when we think of supplements, is 25 hydroxy vitamin D. So that it really doesn't matter whether you get it from a pill, whether you get it in a natural food, or whether you get it through sun exposure and UV wave exposure to the skin. And then you get production and conversion ultimately of vitamin D to its active form, the 125 form. So it really doesn't matter. But the reality is most people don't expose their skin surfaces that are high regions of vitamin D conversion when they're exposed to ultraviolet skin. They don't expose those areas of the body nearly enough to maintain good vitamin D levels. And this is particularly true if they live in more northern areas of the globe. So if they're, I should say far north or far south anywhere, as you get further away from the equator, you get a couple of things working against you. One is the angle of the UV rays from the sun gets worse and worse for conversion of vitamin D in the skin. And secondly, it gets colder and colder so you wear more and more clothes. So particularly in the colder seasons, in whichever area of the world you are, you're going to be putting on more and more clothes and you're just never exposing your skin. And if you do, the UV angles are wrong. So, you know, it's been interesting. You know, when you go to medical school and you study pathology, you'll see these geographic different incidences of different diseases. And for instance, it was always known for a long time now that disorders like multiple sclerosis, let's say, or Ms. Is more prevalent the further away you get from the equator. And there's been a lot of hypotheses why that may be just sort of genetic lines of different cultures that tend to be from different geographic regions and different lengths away from the equator. But, but it's really come down to levels of vitamin D based on how far you are from the equator and the fact that low levels of vitamin D are associated with immune dysregulation and autoimmune diseases. And one of those happens to be Ms. So suffice it to say that vitamin D has become a very, very hot supplement, because vitamin D isn't even really a vitamin. It was misnamed long time ago and sort of the cat's out of the bag. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, as they say. But it's really a hormone and it's a functional hormone that hits over 400 genes that we know of. It does a lot of different things, but primarily it's an immune system regulator and it also, as we know, helps with bone density. So one of the offerings we have in the FX chocolate line again is a vitamin D embedded FX chocolate which, which will allow you to get your vitamin D levels in a very enjoyable form.
This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.
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