The latest recommendation about vitamin D!

                                                      Have these so-called "experts" been living under a rock?

Where else could they have been for the past few decades not to know how important vitamin D is now considered?

Their latest recommendation about vitamin D -- the one from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force -- is the kind of advice that's so completely out of the loop you could easily brush it aside.

But the big question is, will your doctor?

Because that's the job of this group, to inform doctors about "rapidly evolving medical knowledge and information."

And if there's anything that's constantly evolving, it's knowledge about vitamin D. How vital it is to your health, and just how deficient most everyone is in it.

So if your doctor stops worrying about your D levels, or is even against a supplement for it, this is probably where that bad information is coming from.

And here are some important things you need to know before you take that advice.

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Three sheets to the wind
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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says its job is to give the "latest evidence-based research" to doctors so they can make better decisions.

But what they came up with on vitamin D sounds like it's straight out of Looney Tunes.

First, screening for a vitamin D deficiency has almost become routine in good medical care. And doctors are finding that deficiencies are almost epidemic. Some studies show that up to 85 percent of us have low D levels.

And that's why this is so insane.

The task force just proposed new guidelines for docs saying it doesn't recommend they worry about your vitamin D levels. A task force member was even quoted as saying that they just don't "have enough evidence" to say that screenings give any "health benefits."

But since keeping your levels of D up are so important, just how can checking it hurt?

It can't, said the task force. In fact, it said that the "harms" of treating a D deficiency are "small to none." In other words, taking a vitamin D supplement is very, very safe (unlike taking most drugs)!

So what is their problem?

Here's what I think.

What would happen if everyone had good levels of vitamin D?

Drug profits would go down, way down. And that's because the health of Americans would go way up.

Just about all doctors will tell you, low levels of D can be really bad for your health. Even the media, which gets most things wrong, know this.

A D deficiency can cause "increased risk for death from heart disease, cancer, cognitive impairment in older adults and severe asthma in kids."

And that wasn't from some alternative newsletter with 10 subscribers either. That was from the extremely mainstream CBS News. And that's pretty much what we hear from most experts on the topic.

But here's the most ridiculous part of this whole thing. And it came from a publication just for doctors explaining the task force decision.

There's been a tripling in health care visits due to vitamin D deficiencies! That was discovered by looking at diagnosis codes -- those are the numbers used for insurance billing. And yes, there's an insurance code for vitamin D deficiency.

Probably because of that, testing for it has skyrocketed. But that's something this task force wants to stop.

It gave some ridiculous reason that routine testing will end up costing "billions of dollars" for the lab work and the treatment -- which is nothing more than taking a vitamin D supplement!

Now if there's any supplement that's cheaper to buy than vitamin D, I don't know what it is. So its logic is nothing more than Big Pharma hype packaged up to look like it's coming from an "independent body" of researchers.

So even if you don't get your levels checked, you can do certain things that will up your D.

The best way to get your daily dose is from direct sunlight. That way your body makes its own. Just don't overdo it. Around 10 minutes a day is said to be sufficient during the summer months.

Also, many foods are naturally high in D, including salmon, egg yolks and mushrooms.

And taking a vitamin D-3 supplement is definitely an excellent way to keep your levels high. For most people, 800-1,000 IUs daily is considered the right amount.

And it won't cost you billions of dollars either.