Americans Refuse To Get Enough Sun

Carl Lowe | Mar 20, 2013 | Comments 1

Vitamin D helps to strengthen your bones. But researchers have found that even if you live in a sunny part of the country, you’re probably not getting enough sun to allow your skin to make sufficient vitamin D to protect your hips from fracturing.

When researchers looked at the vitamin D levels of 1,539 patients, including 448 acute hip fracture patients and 1,091 total hip (THR) or total knee replacement (TKR) patients at a major medical center in southern California, they found that the sun wasn’t keeping up their levels.

More patients in the hip fracture group were deficient or insufficient (65.8 percent versus 54 percent), and patients age 71 years and older were more deficient or insufficient in the hip fracture group than the joint replacement group (66.7 percent versus 47.13 percent).

Overall, the majority of patients age 18 and older of both sexes with hip fractures had insufficient levels of vitamin D, and those age 71 or older had significantly lower levels than the control group of people who had total hip or knee arthroplasty (reconstruction).