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Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

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Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#71

Post by hateful »

JohnMakin wrote: post #11
alyandon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was diagnosed with low serum levels of vitamin D so I take daily supplements. The general guidance for my condition is 1000 IU daily. At one point in time, I discovered I had been taking 5000 IU/day instead of 1000 IU/day for about 180 days because of the bottles being identical except for the dosage printed in Flyspeck Times Roman 4pt. Fortunately, I alerted my doctor and a followup blood test confirmed I was stil…

Yea, the dosage and labeling for sure needs work. I see 2000 IU doses regularly sold in stores and the bottle says you can take 2/day. Obviously no doctor would recommend that for anyone not sick. I also get regular blood tests since, I'd guess most people using supplements do not.

This is what I've been told to take by my provider, and I've been taking it for at least 5+ years.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#72

Post by Calavar »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #16
JohnMakin wrote: post #4

I struggle to believe that a physician told her to take 5000 IU of vitamin D daily for 5+ years. This is nearly 10x canada's recommended winter time dose for adults under 70. After years of struggling with severe joint pain and mental fog/depression, among other things it was discovered that I had critically low vitamin D. They prescribed the 5000 dose but told me at least 10 times how I should NOT continue this high…

5000 IU daily for 5 years is crazy. Vit D is fat soluble and will stay in the body a long time. Short term big bursts if you're deficient are probably fine, but more than 2000 IU a day for years makes me nervous. for comparison, Vit C is water soluble and you can slam Emergen-C 2000 mg packets without issue as long as you're hydrated and have working kidneys -- you'll pee it out.

Yes, it's fat soluble, and you don't lose fat soluble vitamins in urine the same way you do with vitamin C, but that's only a small part of the puzzle.

Questions you should ask:

1. OK, so fat soluble vitamins aren't excreted in the urine. But are there other processes by which the vitamin is consumed? Because if so, you could quickly run short on the vitamin whether or not it's fat soluble. If deficiency of the vitamin is known to be widespread, that's probably a sign that there is some form of consumption process like this.

2. What is the mechanism of toxicity? This matters because if the mechanism of toxicity is different than the normal mechanism of action, the dose you need to reach toxicity could be orders of magnitude higher than the dose you need to reach physiologic activity.

Regarding point 1: Vitamin D is inactivated inside mitochondria.

Regarding point 2: It's hard to get vitamin D toxicity because active vitamin D (calcitriol) is created "on demand" by cellular processes by tapping a much larger reserve of inert substance (calcifediol). Vitamin D supplements increase the amount of inert substance, not the amount of active substance.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#73

Post by voisin »

hammock wrote: post #19
JohnMakin wrote: post #4

I struggle to believe that a physician told her to take 5000 IU of vitamin D daily for 5+ years. This is nearly 10x canada's recommended winter time dose for adults under 70. After years of struggling with severe joint pain and mental fog/depression, among other things it was discovered that I had critically low vitamin D. They prescribed the 5000 dose but told me at least 10 times how I should NOT continue this high…

The widely used daily recommended amounts of Vitamin D (600 IU in the US and Canada) are wrong, by a factor of 10, and based on a math typo that no one caught until 2017: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/ . I guess many still don't realize this fact. "We call public health authorities to consider designating as the RDA ... around 8000 IU for adults"

Isn’t the issue made worse by the fact that Vitamin D absorption is way lower if not in conjunction with Vitamin K? Or is this a myth?

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#74

Post by voisin »

lambdaba wrote: post #46
Novosell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quotes without a source? > 1mg will instantly kill you.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8811610/ Figured people can Google, all I bring is awareness this is widely overblown, having taken myself, for therapeutic purposes, upwards of 100k IU per day for months without doctor supervision (but doing it correctly, with a very low calcium diet). People take vit D megadoses for autoimmunity, with significant success, but I'm not discussing this here.

Can you comment on why the low calcium diet matters and what is considered low calcium? Doesn’t that lead to other issues?

I have been diagnosed with some autoimmunity issues and would love to try this. How did you identify that vitamin d might help with yours?

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#75

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

JohnMakin wrote: post #4

I struggle to believe that a physician told her to take 5000 IU of vitamin D daily for 5+ years. This is nearly 10x canada's recommended winter time dose for adults under 70. After years of struggling with severe joint pain and mental fog/depression, among other things it was discovered that I had critically low vitamin D. They prescribed the 5000 dose but told me at least 10 times how I should NOT continue this high…

You can literally get 10,000 IU of vitamin D a day from just being out in the sun, particularly if you're fair-skinned. That would suggest that people who work outdoors would be chronically overdosing.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#76

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

I'm currently taking 10,000IU per day in an effort to control psoriasis, but it's a bit of guess work really and trying stuff to see what helps. It's somewhat annoying that I've had a dermatologist order some blood tests, but they were only targeted for whether I can safely take acitretin (a retinoid). I wish there were cheap home-tests for various blood levels of minerals and vitamins like there are for things like glucose and uric acid (I occasionally get gout if I eat too much oily fish or asparagus).

Edit: just found that there are ones for vitamin d - shame there don't seem to be calcium ones.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#77

Post by valarauko »

homefree wrote: post #37
JohnMakin wrote: post #4

I struggle to believe that a physician told her to take 5000 IU of vitamin D daily for 5+ years. This is nearly 10x canada's recommended winter time dose for adults under 70. After years of struggling with severe joint pain and mental fog/depression, among other things it was discovered that I had critically low vitamin D. They prescribed the 5000 dose but told me at least 10 times how I should NOT continue this high…

I had vitamin d deficiency and they prescribed a 50,000 IU pill to take once a week for 3 months, then said 5000 IU daily after that would be fine. What qualified as deficient also changed during this time too. The recommendation doesn’t surprise me and the vitamin stuff has always seemed like they didn’t really know what they were talking about imo.

In India the standard of care used to be (unsure if its still the case) of a bolus dose of 60,000 IU once a week, for a month, after which you switch to taking the 60,000 IU once a month.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#78

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

chimeracoder wrote: post #65
JohnMakin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should clarify by what I obviously meant that doctors would not recommend that as a DAILY dose - daily implying long-term use is okay.

> I should clarify by what I obviously meant that doctors would not recommend that as a DAILY dose - daily implying long-term use is okay. Yes, and I'm saying that this does in fact happen.

Concur - I was diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency and my doctor prescribed an initial regimen of prescription tablets at 50,000 IU and then suggested 3,000-5,000 IU daily.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#79

Post by ww520 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #76

I'm currently taking 10,000IU per day in an effort to control psoriasis, but it's a bit of guess work really and trying stuff to see what helps. It's somewhat annoying that I've had a dermatologist order some blood tests, but they were only targeted for whether I can safely take acitretin (a retinoid). I wish there were cheap home-tests for various blood levels of minerals and vitamins like there are for things like…

Does more exposure to sunlight help? I remember there’s UV light treatment that shines for a few minutes.

Re: Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)

#80

Post by conorh »

This article was written by my wife a while back. It is part of a series she wrote to help people think about Vitamin D. She's actually doing a facebook live presentation (and taking questions) on Vitamin D next month if anyone is interested [1]. She's doing consults all day today and tomorrow but I'll let her know this is here.

[1] https://fb.me/e/4WMVAXS9u

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