Your Vitamin D Levels Affect Sleep Health + How A Supplement Can Help

There are a few common culprits that can turn a good night's sleep into a night of tossing and turning: suboptimal room temperature, blue light exposure, caffeine too close to bedtime, to name a few. But have you considered how nutrition may be playing a role in your sleep health?

As it turns out, your vitamin D status (specifically, getting enough of the essential nutrient) can seriously affect your chances of getting a good night's rest.

According to a 2020 scientific review2 from Current Pharmaceutical Design, vitamin D receptors are found in multiple areas of the brain that regulate sleep, suggesting the essential vitamin has an important role in sleep health. Vitamin D has also been found to have a direct impact on melatonin production pathways and an indirect impact on health issues that affect sleep quality.*

When it comes to vitamin D intake, it appears getting enough of the "sunshine vitamin" correlates with getting adequate sleep as well: A 2019 3Nutrients3 cross-sectional analysis3 reveals that U.S. adult "short-sleepers" (i.e., individuals that get less than seven hours of sleep each night) have an average daily intake of approximately 178 IU of vitamin D. 

For the record, that's 1,822 IU below the amount of vitamin D an adult would need to avoid gross deficiency (i.e., 2,000 IU to avoid a failing vitamin D level of less than 20 ng/ml), and a whopping 4,822 IU less than the necessary daily dosage (5,000 IU) to achieve truly optimal vitamin D levels (50 ng/ml)!

Taking into account the minimum dosage (3,000 IU) required to achieve minimum clinical cutoff for sufficiency (30 ng/ml), this correlation doesn't seem coincidental.

Though it's nicknamed the sunshine vitamin, the truth is that getting enough vitamin D from the sun alone isn't just difficult—it's near impossible (and risky). Unfortunately, diet also fails us in this regard (unless you enjoy drinking 50 glasses of milk a day, which has its own nutritional concerns).

The truth is this: Daily vitamin D supplementation is your best chance of achieving healthy vitamin D levels and reaping the vitamin's many health benefits (which include supporting your sleep health!).* 

There's no denying that vitamin D plays an important role in sleep health.

Considering diet and sunshine alone aren't quite enough to move the needle on vitamin D status, an effective vitamin D supplement is the best way to ensure sufficiency and support a good night's rest.*