Does anyone have any info about vitamin D leves and contact lens/glasses wearers? I read a bit about not absorbing vitamin D if you wear contacts or glasses and I am a bit concerned as I have worn glasses since I was 7, and contacts daily since I was 15!

I have vitamin D deficiency and have to take supplements weekly for it.  From what I know about it and have been told, glasses may decrease absorbstion by a minimal amount but contact lenses wouldn’t have any effect that I know off. My dr informed me that to get the vitamin d we need all we need to do is spend 15 mins twice a week out in the sun without sunscreen.  This only works in summer though as the sun isn’t strong enough in winter to provide any vitamin d for us in the northern hemisphere.  If your really concerned about your levels you can request a blood test but gps won’t usually do them.  Obviously if your really concerned it is worth getting checked out as deficiency if untreated can cause calcium deficiency and degeneration of your bones.  That’s how they found mine as I have red lumps like the ones found in artheritis on the back of my knuckles.

We had a look into vit D for some reason a couple of years ago.  I think it was to do with weighing up the benefits of using sunscreen.  I worked out that a day or two naked in the summer sun would allow your body to produce the equivalent vit D to a years worth of a high vitamin D diet.  Also, if you have enough vit D, then you stop producing it (unlike dietary vit D, which you just absorb anyway).

It is synthesised in the skin, so I imagine glasses/contacts would make very little difference to your total vit D.  I don’t know if your eyes need to produce it separately, but I imagine not.  My understanding is that blocking UV from your eyes should be a good thing.

So, I wouldn’t worry about it.  If you are worried, just spend a day or two outdoors in the nude next time we have some sun!!!

You asborb Vit D through your skin hun, I have read that the eye lids are the most sensitive for Vit D production, so yes glasses would impeded that but not contact lenses.

Actually the best thing you can do is sun bath 2 or 3x a week for around 10-20 mins, obviously without sunscreen… and importantly children need exposure to the sun too without sunscreen.  Again only 10 or 20 mins and then cover them up.  Amazingly, there’s been reports of children getting rickets, purely because they are covered from head to two in sunscreen and so deficient in Vit D.

Vit D is an amazing vitamin too; it helps prevents cancers, osterperosis,  mental illnesses like depression, schiphrenia, rickets, diabetes and it can even be useful for obesity, it’s recently been linked to helping with autoimmune diseases, alzemiers etc.  A very, very important vitamin.

Jx

Eye absorption is minimal is limited.  But then total exposure in the general population in this country is also limited - due to lack of sunlight but also the use of sunscreens, sunglasses, UV clothing, sunhats and the like.

I would be supplementing (and do, both for myself and children) all winter and during early Spring and Autumn.  We never use sunscreen, and all have variations of red/light hair and fair skin.

Be sure to supplement with D3 rather than the vastly inferior D2.

I had a Vit D blood test (that I paid for as my GP just had no clue there was even such a test) and despite spending large portions of every day outside, without sun protection, my levels of vitamin D were so negligible they hardly scored.  I now take 8000IU’s per day.  My children (ages 3 through to 10) take 2000IU’s per day.

My health has improved considerably in the year of taking this supplement