Mike returned home to Philadelphia after a 15-year prison sentence and suffered an emotional breakdown.

“I just couldn’t stop crying … I don’t know. It was the anxiety. It was just a lot,” he said. “I was under a lot of pressure and it just came crashing down.”

Mike, who was in his late 40s when we spoke, told me about his childhood filled with abuse, his first arrest at age 14, and the over 20 years of...

Children whose mothers had higher vitamin D levels during pregnancy scored better on tests of memory, attention and problem-solving skills at ages 7 to 12 compared with those whose mothers had lower levels. That is a key finding of a new peer-reviewed study^[1] that my colleagues and I published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

While vitamin D has long been known for its role in maintaining bone health^[2],...