Take a vitamin D supplement to protect your bones from fractures
The old claim turned out to be wrong and was rejected by evidence.
TaughtVitamin D builds strong bones, so a daily supplement is a sensible way for adults to keep their bones dense and guard against fractures as they age.
NowThe large VITAL trial, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2022, found that vitamin D3 supplements did not lower the risk of fractures in generally healthy adults who were not deficient: no reduction in total, non-vertebral, or hip fractures.
What actually happened
VITAL was built to settle the question properly: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day in more than 25,000 men 50 and older and women 55 and older, followed for around five years. Its bone-health analysis, led by Meryl LeBoff at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is about as decisive as this kind of study gets.
The result was a flat line. Supplementation produced no lower rate of fractures of any kind in the general population. The crucial qualifier is 'generally healthy and not deficient'; the participants were not selected for low vitamin D, osteoporosis, or low bone mass. For someone who is genuinely vitamin-D deficient, correcting that deficiency still matters, and this trial does not speak to them.
What it disproves is the blanket wellness assumption: that a healthy adult with normal levels should take vitamin D to fortify their bones. For that person, the pills did nothing measurable for fracture risk, and an accompanying editorial argued it was time to stop routinely screening and supplementing healthy adults for this purpose.
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Who was taught this
Still standard through 2022, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 2022 learned the earlier version.