Does sunscreen limit my vitamin D intake?

It has long been suggested that sunscreen can limit the amount of vitamin D your body takes in from the sun since it largely blocks sunlight from reaching your skin. A 2017 studyTrusted Source suggests that sunscreens with an SPF higher than 50 can reduce vitamin D absorbed through the skin by up to 92.5%.

But the study also found that blood levels of vitamin D were reduced by only 7–13%. This indicates that your body likely finds other ways to make up for the vitamin D exposure you’re not getting from sunlight.

The authors of a 2019 review articleTrusted Source looked at research published between 1970 and 2017 on sunscreen’s interaction with UV rays. They found that there’s little evidence that sunscreen use limits vitamin D intake — especially because most studies have used artificial UV light that behaves much differently than UV light produced by the sun.

The researchers also warned that concerns about vitamin D intake shouldn’t distract from concerns about skin cancer from direct UV ray exposure. The risk of skin cancer is much higher and more extensively documented than the risk of reduced vitamin D intake.