(Mary Claire Fischer/ Michigan Medicine) — In the supplement world, vitamin D has long been the star.
For decades, it’s been touted as a cure-all supplement — a cheap, easy way to fix health problems ranging from depression to heart disease to even incontinence. After all, all these medical conditions have been tied to low levels of vitamin D, so why not take more of it to fix the issues?
“There’s always something that we want to believe does it all, right?” said Mark Moyad, M.D., M.P.H., the Jenkins/Pokempner Director of Preventive & Alternative Medicine in the Department of Urology at University of Michigan Health and a renowned expert in supplements. “People started seeing that vitamin D was involved in all these pathways as an anti-inflammatory, so there was this idea as I was getting older that it does everything.
And that’s immediately when I went, ‘That’s not possible.’” (…)