Most middle-age women suffer vitamin D shortage

TAIPEI - Up to 50 per cent of middle-aged women in Taiwan suffer shortage of vitamin D due to their fear of basking in the sunshine, thus leading to low bone mass density, according to doctors.

Tsai Ke-song, a doctor at the National Taiwan University Hospital, said at an international healthcare foods seminar held in Taipei yesterday morning that quite a few local women are unwilling to sun themselves to protect themselves from being browned by the sunlight.

This, coupled with their failure to absorb vitamin D from foods, has made them unable to have sufficient vitamin D.

Vitamin D is a steroid vitamin, a group of fat-soluble prohormones, which encourages the absorption and metabolism of calcium and phosphorous.

People who are exposed to normal quantities of sunlight do not need vitamin D supplements because sunlight creates sufficient vitamin D synthesis in the skin.