Rick Holm is a strong proponent of vitamin D. “The Prairie Doc,” as he’s known to viewers of “On Call,” a weekly program on South Dakota Public Television, is an internist who has practiced medicine full time at the Avera Brookings Medical Clinic since 1981.

He tells patients and viewers of his program that in South Dakota for six months every year it’s impossible to get enough vitamin D from the sun, and that taking it regularly as a supplement can have a whole list of positive effects on one’s health.

“Lower vitamin D levels have been associated in more than one study with an increased all-cause death rate,” said Holm. “Although the case that taking vitamin D reverses an increased mortality rate is less proven, taking a dose of 2000 iu per day is safe and certainly cannot hurt. I recommend that for all of my patients, I monitor their calcium levels and do not supplement with calcium. I’d suggest this idea is especially important during the equinox-to-equinox longer night seasons.”

So if you show up at the cash register of a pharmacy In Brookings with a bottle of vitamin D in hand, it’s about a 50-50 chance the cashier will say, “You must be one of Rick Holm’s patients.”

“On Call,” produced at South Dakota State University’s Yeager Media Center, airs on Thursday nights and is the only medical program endorsed by the South Dakota State Medical Association and the South Dakota Department of Health.

Holm is a graduate of the University of South Dakota, attended the University of South Dakota School of Medicine, and completed his med school training at Emory in Atlanta, Ga. He specialized in internal medicine and was a faculty member at Emory/Grady Hospital before coming back home to the prairie and Brookings, S.D.

Holm can be reached at 605-690-4111 or by email at [email protected]. Online he can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/OnCallTV, or his website at https://prairiedoc.org/