I normally am in the PD forum but I will butt in here and share my two cents...this is my understanding of Vitamin D:

When sunlight hits our skin, it uses cholesterol in the body to make vitamin D, specifically, D3. I don't know how a synthetic form of D3 could be better than making our own.

The older we are, the longer it takes the sun on our skin to make the same amount of Vitamin D3....the darker our skin is naturally, that also takes longer...and obviously, if one is taking statins, which lower cholesterol, you are depleting the cholesterol the body has to have in order to make Vitamin D3. My dad, a smart-aleck PhD from MIT, told his doctor that he was not interested in lowering his cholesterol, and in fact, was concerned it wasn't high enough, because of the vitamin D3....his doctor had no clue, and sadly my dad had to explain the whole process to him.

I can remember my grandma, who died 30 days shy of 100, peeling back her shirt, rolling up her sleeves and pant legs, and sitting in the sun on her porch a good part of the day (a lovely sight, but at almost 100, who gives a rip? No pun intended, but that was funny!). How did she know? I have no idea, but it worked, she was mentally all there until very shortly before she died, and in very good health, although frail.

One other thing: nix the sunscreen. Not only do they mask the beneficial sunlight we need to contact our skin to make the Vitamin D3, but they fool us into staying out in the sun far longer than our body would otherwise allow, so that instead of getting burned and getting out of the sun, as we would normally do without sunscreen, we continue to stay out in the sun...which I have read damages the nerves under the skin surface. I dont' allow my kids to use sunscreen anymore and we live in Texas! What do we do? Go out early, before 11am, or after 5pm, and don't stay out very long in the sun...use hats, common sense.

It would be great if all one needed to treat MS was our beautiful sun!