I still can't figure out the safe + effective dosage of Vitamin D. I was taking 1,000mg a day and that didn't seem to move the needle on my Vitamin D blood work. In recent weeks I've been taking 4,000mg/day (with K2), which is 4x what I've had pharmacists recommend. I plan to keep that up for a couple more weeks while I'm under quarantine (recently flew from a high-risk country to a less high-risk country). After tha…
The safest way is to take an occasional test for your vitamin d levels. There are tests that you can take at home that aren't too expensive!
Thanks. I didn't know.
Amazon has a few options in the $50-90 range.
You prick your finger, draw a "small amount" of blood, and send it to a lab.
This conclusion (10x higher mortality if deficient in Vitamin D) is rather significant. How trustworthy is this source?
Keep in mind that they aren't saying that their data doesn't say that people not given vitamin D supplements were 10x more likely to die. Instead that people coming in with a deficiency already were 10x more likely to die. Imagine if you had two groups. Group A runs for 1 hour a day outside. The group B is confined to their beds in a nursing home. Group B is going to have a vitamin D deficiency compared to group A. G…
And yet it has been long known D supports the immune system. Being technically-right here is not a good survival strategy.
I've mentioned this before, but my wife is a parathyroid surgeon (parathyroids are the glands that regulate the calcium in your neck) and would beg you to PLEASE monitor your calcium levels if you are supplementing with Vitamin D. She often sees patients on high doses of Vitamin D from well intentioned doctors, but with out of whack calcium levels because of it, and the patients can be very sick without understanding…
Would you mind elaborating on what you mean by "wacky" levels? I can't tell from your comment if that means high or low. Asking as a Vitamin D supplement user who uses 2-3k IU a day
Hi, I'm the wife. High dose Vitamin D can cause elevated calcium levels (meaning over 10.0 mg/dl for adults over 40, it can be a little higher for younger adults). I usually don't see that occur with doses at 2-3 K IU daily. You can also check your Vitamin D 25-OH levels (the level that will be done if you just get a standard "Vitamin D level") and these should be in a reasonable range. What constitutes reasonable may be debatable, but in general I do not see elevated calcium levels with Vitamin D levels that are under 50 ng/ml (unless the person has parathyroid disease, another topic). The "toxic" range for Vitamin D is usually set to 100, but this is well over where most people should be. Toxicity with regard to Vitamin D means high calcium - that is the toxic effect. And I have seen this toxic effect occur with Vit D levels in the 50s.
I've mentioned this before, but my wife is a parathyroid surgeon (parathyroids are the glands that regulate the calcium in your neck) and would beg you to PLEASE monitor your calcium levels if you are supplementing with Vitamin D. She often sees patients on high doses of Vitamin D from well intentioned doctors, but with out of whack calcium levels because of it, and the patients can be very sick without understanding…
Here (below) is a quote from the article, on the subject of calcium. (I suppose some of us may be reluctant or unable to have calcium levels monitored. But it seems all of us should be taking vitamin K2 along with our vitamin D.)
>The authors
explicitly point out that each vitamin D supplementation must be accompanied by
sufficient vitamin K2. This certainly prevents the rise of the calcium level in the blood,
which is often seen as a risk for the supply of vitamin D
In this case, the doctors really do know better. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to just about every disease. That's because it's a marker of frailty, not a direct cause for most of these diseases. In other words, correlation does not imply causation. It sounds like you have too much confidence in published research and not enough confidence in your local health officials.
> too much confidence in published research and not enough confidence in your local health officials I can't figure out if you're being sarcastic, or if you really do think that a local politician knows more about medicine than is contained in actual medical research.
He's been talking with "the local health department", not some local politician. I trust health departments a lot more than I trust techies grepping PubMed. Techies don't have the context to understand and filter bogus research. Studies that correlate Vitamin D deficiency with X goes straight to the mental spam filter for experienced people in public health. If Vitamin D deficiency actually caused all this disease we would be living in a golden age of progress on cancer, heart disease, infectious disease, mental health, etc. because Vitamin D deficiency is easy and cheap to treat.
Would you mind elaborating on what you mean by "wacky" levels? I can't tell from your comment if that means high or low. Asking as a Vitamin D supplement user who uses 2-3k IU a day
Not a doctor, but I have had kidney stones. The answer is a loss of calcium, so high level found in urine test: if you had way too much vitamin D, then you would start releasing the calcium from your bones. I don't think that taking calcium supplements would help, because calcium metabolism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_metabolism ) is much more complex than that.
Calcium metabolism is complicated, but there are a few things that are straightforward.
1. Vitamin D helps the intestines absorb calcium, so taking more Vitamin D can lead to more calcium being absorbed in your intestines, and thus more calcium in the blood. The excess calcium in your blood is caused by increased absorption from the intestines, not from bone release. (High calcium with parathyroid disease is caused by bone release, as well as increased intestinal absorption)
2. Taking calcium supplements along with Vitamin D will allow your intestines to absorb more of the calcium you are taking.
3. There are several reasons for having a lot of calcium in the urine. Primary hyperparathyroidism can do it, and in this case you will see high blood calcium levels also. If the blood calcium is low or normal (under 10.0 mg/dl), then you have another reason for high urine calcium.
I've mentioned this before, but my wife is a parathyroid surgeon (parathyroids are the glands that regulate the calcium in your neck) and would beg you to PLEASE monitor your calcium levels if you are supplementing with Vitamin D. She often sees patients on high doses of Vitamin D from well intentioned doctors, but with out of whack calcium levels because of it, and the patients can be very sick without understanding…
There are great questions on this thread, when she is available she will weigh in. I don't have the answers unfortunately! Feel free to reach out to her via her website too if you have very specific questions - she doesn't mind that at all.
Thank you. Somewhat related: I wanted to inform that ublock hides the submit button on the blog - if someone is having difficulty subscribing, they should trying disabling ublock for a bit before the submit button becomes visible.
Technically true, but you should still eat vitamin D supplements. It's very cheap and safe, so worst case it has less effect than you hope. You can overdose, but you have to really crazy with the dosage. Also 1: Vitamin D supplements do cure rickets. Also 2: All of us who eat supplements should show up in the stats as high in vitamin D, so the data does partially cover that case.
What brand/strength of VitaminD supplements do you all take?
Personal anecdote - vitamin D supplements did absolutely nothing for my vitamin D levels. it wasn't until I committed to getting more sunlight that my levels increased.
What was your daily IU supplementation, and how long did you supplement before checking your levels again? I take 5000 IU daily, but also wonder if I'd do better with more sunlight instead.
I was taking 50000 IU a week. Checked multiple times over periods of months.