Vitamin D supplements
I am for the most part very anti-tablets. You won't find me taking even paracetamol when I get the flu. I'm a firm believer in rule 13 of Samuel Shem's The house of God. That said, there is one tablet that I do take every day and recommend everyone takes every day and that is vitamin D.
I first got interested in vitamin D when I worked briefly on an orthopaedic ward as an SHO. Orthopaedics for those who don't know is the surgical speciality that fixes bones. As an SHO you don't have anything to do with any of the surgery, instead, you look after the patient's pre and post-op. That ward was a daily disaster show. People would come in with truly horrific injuries displayed in 2D on x-rays and now thanks to the wonder of modern technology in 3D through CT scans. I would see truly horrific injuries that without orthopaedic surgery would leave these people crippled for life. And you might think the injuries I'm talking about would have been sustained through some ghastly road traffic accident. But no instead they were often sustained by what seemed to be very minor injuries that many of us sustain every day. Things like missing a step coming down a staircase. Trivial everyday occurrences. It starts to make you paranoid that these things could easily happen to you and so I started to think about how to prevent it from happening to me.
Well, luckily I didn't have to search for the answer, because the answer was one of the main parts of my job as an orthopaedic SHO. Everyone who was admitted with a fracture would have their vitamin D levels measured and if we found it to be deficient they would be treated with high dose vitamin D (10000IU twice weekly) for 12 weeks. Even those who weren't deficient we would put them on maintenance supplements (400IU daily) to try and strengthen their bones to try to prevent them from sustaining another fracture.
So I already knew the answer of how to reduce my risk of sustaining such horrible injuries to my bones. Take vitamin D. So I did, I bought myself a 400IU tablet of vitamin D and have been taking one each day since. In my experience, it has had no side effects for me, not even GI side effects. I often take it on an empty stomach and it has never yet given me indigestion, although if you are prone to this, you may be best to take it with food. It is cheap and easily available from any pharmacist under the sky.
Vitamin D test kits
If you would like to check your vitamin D levels at home we have a home vitamin D test kit available here
Professional packs of vitamin D test kits are available to buy online here