Summary: Adequate vitamin D nutrition is associated with the prevention of rickets in children and therefore, little thought is given about the consequences of vitamin D deficiency in adults. However, it is now becoming clear that vitamin D plays an important role in maintaining bone health from birth until death. Of equal importance is that vitamin D has a multitude of other biologic functions in the body that may be important for the prevention of common cancers, hypertension, type-1 diabetes, as well as a host of other common maladies that afflict elders. Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., M.D. is a Professor of Medicine, Physiology and Biophysics; Director of the General Clinical Research Unit; Director of the Bone Health Care Clinic and the Director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University Medical Center. Dr. Holick has made numerous contributions to the field of the biochemistry, physiology, metabolism, and photobiology of vitamin D for human nutrition. Dr. Holick has established global recommendations advising sunlight exposure as an integral source of vitamin D. He has helped increase awareness in the pediatric and medical communities regarding vitamin D deficiency pandemic, and its role in causing not only metabolic bone disease, and osteoporosis in adults, but increasing risk of children and adults developing preeclampsia, common deadly cancers, schizophrenia, infectious diseases including TB and influenza, autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Dr. Holick is a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition, and a member of the American Academy of Dermatology and the American Association of Physicians. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and serves on a number of national committees and editorial boards and has organized and/or co-chaired several international symposia. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, and written more than 200 review articles, as well as numerous book chapters. He has acted as editor and/or co-editor on 10 books, and has written The UV Advantage, and The Vitamin D Solution.
