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Integrative Health

How To Get The Vitamin D You Need: The Truth About Sunlight, Foods & Supplements

Author: Korin Miller

March 29, 2026

Contributing writer

By Korin Miller

Contributing writer

Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, relationships, and lifestyle trends with a master’s degree from American University. Her work has appeared in Women’s Health, Prevention, Self, Glamour, and more.

Image by Doucefleur / Stocksy

March 29, 2026

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Vitamin D is an essential nutrient. But it's rare to get enough of it from food and sunshine alone without being very intentional. In fact, research has shown that 931 to 100%2 of Americans fail to consume just 400 IU from their diet each day, and many experts say 5,000 IU per day is needed for optimal health. Further, almost half the population3 in the U.S. is insufficient in the sunshine vitamin (considering all inputs from sun, diet, etc.!), which just really isn't great news for our overall health.

If you're one of those people (and there's a pretty good chance you might be) it's important to up your vitamin D intake wherever you can. Here's what you need to know about this crucial vitamin—and how to get your levels up (and keep them up).

What is vitamin D, and what are the benefits?

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and hormone4 (in its active form) that helps your body absorb and maintain homeostasis of calcium and phosphorus, major building blocks needed to create and maintain strong bones and teeth5.* Ample vitamin D also allows these minerals to function properly in your muscles so they can contract and relax properly.*

That's not all, either. The sunshine vitamin also supports the body's response to inflammation, promotes cell growth, and is critical for immune function.*

Without ample vitamin D (more on that in a second), a variety of body systems struggle to function optimally.*

How much vitamin D do you need?

Vitamin D needs are more nuanced than you might think. As Ashley Jordan Ferira, Ph.D., RDN, explains: "The question of daily vitamin D needs is directly informed by your vitamin D status, measured via serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D from a blood test, or for short, 25(OH)D."

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The National Academies recommend a cutoff of 20 ng/ml for sufficiency, while The Endocrine Society more recently vetted the science and recommended a 30 ng/ml cutoff. As Ferira expounds, "to be clear, these cut points are numbers to avoid. In other words, you want to exceed 30 ng/ml daily for most of your life to reap the full benefits of vitamin D for health."* In fact, a vitamin D supplement less than 20 or 30 ng/ml is associated with suboptimal bone density (not something to mess with).

To support your personal health, you'll want to get familiar with your 25(OH)D levels, which means asking your health care provider for this simple blood test6. This is the clinical measure of your whole-body vitamin D status, and necessary information if you want to track your baseline status and watch how optimizing your vitamin D intake makes a significant impact.*

Brittany Henderson, M.D., a board-certified endocrinologist who specializes in hormones (including vitamin D) in her clinical practice, shares that "achieving optimal serum 25(OH)D levels in the 50+ ng/ml range is imperative for immune health, bone health, and more."*

Now, here's where things get interesting: Research shows that 100 IU of vitamin D3 (which is the body's preferred form) per day raises 25(OH)D levels in the average (healthy weight) adult by 1 ng/ml7. So, if you want to hit 50 ng/ml, 1,000 or 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day won't get you there; in fact, they won't even get you close. Based on this science, you'd need closer to 5,000 IU per day to reach the optimal range.*

What are the main sources of vitamin D?

Given how much vitamin D the average person really needs to hit the sweet spot for their health and well-being, it's a feat that's seriously difficult to achieve through food and sunshine alone.* Here's what to know about the three different ways you can score more of the important nutrient.

Food & Beverage

"Vitamin D is found in very few foods—and the foods that it is found in do not have amounts that will move the needle much in terms of total amount humans need for health," says integrative dietitian Whitney Crouch, RDN, CLT.

Sina Gallo, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Georgia, agrees: "It's difficult to meet the requirement for this vitamin through diet alone."

To give you a sense of what you're working with (and why folks aren't hitting 5,000 IU per day from food alone), the following foods are the