From the Vitamin D Council Website:

Vitamin D, Sunshine, and Your Health
If you totally avoid the sun, recent research indicates you need about 
4,000 units of vitamin D a day! Which means you can't get enough 
vitamin D from milk (unless you drink 40 glasses a day) or from a 
multivitamin (unless you take about 10 tablets a day), neither of which 
is recommended.
Most of us make about 20,000 units of vitamin D after about 20 minutes 
of summer sun. This is about 100 times more vitamin D than the 
government says you need every day.
The only way to be sure you have adequate levels of vitamin D in your 
blood is to regularly go into the sun, use a sun bed (avoiding 
sunburn), or have your physician administer a 25‑hydroxyvitamin D test. 
Optimal levels are around 50 ng/mL (125 nM/L).
If you don't get vitamin D the way Mother Nature intended, from 
sunshine, you need to take supplemental vitamin D3 cholecalciferol. 
Since most of us get a lot more vitamin D from sunshine than we 
realize, most of us need about 2,000 units a day extra.



FWIW, I am an organic gardener who hates sunscreen.  I get lots of sun 
exposure all year round (midwest USA) and take a multi with 800 IU,  I 
had the test run just for kicks, and came back with a value of only 30, 
where 50 is optimal.  I don't offer a blanket recommendation for 
supplementing, but I am pretty convinced that testing is a smart idea.

Lynn in MO
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