15 Recipes to Boost Your Vitamin D (2024)

FAQs

What dishes are high in vitamin D? ›

The best food sources of vitamin D are oily fish, including salmon, mackerel, and sardines. Other sources include egg yolks, red meat, and liver. Vitamin D is added to some foods too, including breakfast cereals, plant milks and fat spreads.

The published data show that the highest values of vitamin D are found in fish and especially in fish liver, but offal also provides considerable amounts of vitamin D. The content in muscle meat is generally much lower.

You need to expose a sufficient amount of skin to sunlight to maintain healthy vitamin D blood levels. Wearing a tank top and shorts for 10–30 minutes three times per week is sufficient for lighter-skinned people, while those with darker skin may need longer.

When vitamin D levels are low and the body isn't able to properly absorb calcium and phosphorus, there is an increased risk of bone pain, bone fractures, muscle pain, and muscle weakness. In older adults, severe vitamin D deficiency (levels less than 10 ng/mL) may also contribute to an increased risk of falls.

You typically get vitamin D from animal sources. Fungi, like wild mushrooms and mushrooms exposed to UV light, also contain vitamin D. Other vegetarian sources include vitamin-D fortified soy milk and cow's milk, fortified orange juice, and fortified grains.

How do you feel when your vitamin D is extremely low? ›

Most people with vitamin D deficiency are asymptomatic. However, if you're exhausted, your bones hurt, you have muscle weakness or mood changes, that's an indication that something may be abnormal with your body. Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency may include: Fatigue.

But how do you flush vitamin D out of your system – and can you even do that? Yes, by ensuring you consume plenty of water. This will encourage urination, allowing your body to shed the excess vitamin D and calcium more quickly. Prescription diuretics like furosemide can also be helpful.

Hard-boiled eggs are also a source of vitamins A and D. Eggs, no matter how they are prepared, are a source of saturated fats and can raise your LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol levels, although not as much as some other foods.

Eggs (with the yolk), mushrooms (that have been exposed to the sun), and fortified dairy and alternative milk products can all contain vitamin D. But one of the best sources of vitamin D come from fatty fish—which is what you should consider incorporating into your breakfast.