I am going to take this directly off the Vitamin D Council’s website, and I’m sure they’ll let me know if that’s not okay.

* If you totally avoid the sun, recent research indicates you need about 4,000 units of vitamin D a day. Which means you can’t get enough vitamin D from milk (unless you drink 40 glasses a day) or from a multivitamin (unless you take about 10 tablets a day), neither of which is recommended.

* Most of us make about 20,000 units of vitamin D after about 20 minutes of summer sun. This is about 100 times more vitamin D than the government says you need every day.

* The only way to be sure you have adequate levels of vitamin D in your blood is to regularly go into the sun, use a sun bed (avoiding sunburn), or have your physician administer a 25‑hydroxyvitamin D test. Optimal levels are around 50 ng/mL (125 nM/L).

* If you don’t get vitamin D the way Mother Nature intended, from sunshine, you need to take supplemental vitamin D3 cholecalciferol. Since most of us get a lot more vitamin D from sunshine than we realize, most of us need about 2,000 units a day extra.

Please visit the VitaminDCouncil.org to learn more.

Here are three easy ways to get your Vitamin D level tested.