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My vitamin d level, 5 months ago was 30, i right away started taking vitmn d 5000IU every day and my level is now up to 37 points, does that mean i should buy a differ company vitamin d, because the levels barely increased after 5 months of use?

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In May 2015 my vit level was 22. Doc prescribed 12K vitamin D for a week in may. Now in Dec I usually take 2k a day but raised it to 4k this mth Safe?

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In May 2015 vita D was 22. I take 2k daily during winter but decided to double dosage every other day. Just noticed now urine bright yellow. Stop it?

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I get frequent headaches with blurry vision. I also feel very low on energy and almost get a dizzy feeling. My vitamin B and D levels came low. ?

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Can you tell me if i take royal jelly together with vitamin d, how will this benefit me ?

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Can you tell me how a human take in vitamin d from the sun?

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What do vitamin d and calcium do in the body?

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What are the side effects of too much vitamin d?

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What happens if we don't get enough vitamin D every day?

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What is the maximum amount of vitamin D you can safely have?

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What is the scientific name for vitamin d?

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What are the best vitamin d supplements? How much should one take?

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I've been taking 5000iu Vit D3 daily for 1 1/2 yrs. one yr ago level was 61 now it's 53. Why would it go down if I'm taking same amount?

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Hi! I was told that taking 10 000u of vitD supp per week is better than taking 1000u per day! cz it's better for the stomach! Is it true ???

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Can anixity be caused by low t number ,184ng/dl or vitamin d level low at 25.9?

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What is an everyday vitamin or supplement that a woman should take?

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Fluke or Trend? Vitamin D vs Heart Disease

The latest supplement being lobbed back & forth these days is vitamin D.  At the very least, we have plenty of cause & effects studies demonstrating that vitamin D is necessary for bone health.  Without enough vitamin D, we end up with rickets.  But what about health matters unrelated to bone?  Heart disease?  Diabetes?  Cancer?

It turns out that there are plenty of studies linking low vitamin D to greater risk of death from all-causes & from heart disease.  However, these observation studies don't demonstrate cause & effect.  But as the Rolling Stones say, you can't always get what you want.  So in this case, I'll settle for an observational study published this month in the American Journal of Medicine in which the authors concluded that 25OH vitamin D less than 21ng/mL was linked to an increase risk of all-cause & cardiovascular mortality.

In a fashion not unlike that of the National Security Administration, except with permission & proper supervision, the authors gathered data from 10,170 men & women avg 47yo participating in the National Health & Nutrition Examination Study and correlated this with the National Death Index for an average of just under 4yrs.  They noted that low levels of 25OH vitamin D, up to what's currently considered insufficiency at 21ng/mL, were associated with increase risk of death from both all-causes & heart disease.  This is consistent w/recent reviews concluding that "normal" values in 30-100ng/mL range do not improve upon outcomes.

Yet despite the fact that this study supports the trend of studies linking vitamin D to our health, there's still no conclusive proof of cause & effect.  So what are we to do in the meantime?  Well, the good news is that unless you exceed 100ng/mL, it's unlikely that you'll suffer from hypercalcemia & other maladies.  In other words, vitamin D supplementation appears to be safe, as far as we currently know.  Which then makes it easier to consider supplementation if we don't have time to wait around for a cause & effect trial.  Of course, this is something that should be discussed w/your family physician.  And don't forget to think like Goldilocks. You want your 25OH vitamin D level just right, not too high & clearly, not too low.

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Vitamin D vs Heart Attacks: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Currently, vitamin D is enjoying its 15 minutes of fame in the limelight.  Its deficiency is being linked to just about any imaginable condition.  Unfortunately, we only have repeated proof or evidence to support its use in making bones stronger.  Severe prolonged vitamin D deficiency leads to rickets which is then cured by consuming vitamin D.  But as for its links to dementia, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, etc, the associations are tenuous at best, falling far short of the randomized controlled trial that proves cause & effect.

Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise in a retrospective study published in this month's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, that a U shaped curve demonstrated an increase risk for acute coronary syndrome (heart attack) & cardiac mortality in those w/25OH vitamin D less than 20ng/dL.  Interestingly, the sweet spot for 25OH vitamin D was just 20-32ng/dL, with any level about 32ng/dL also being associated w/ACS & cardiac mortality.  Of course, the editorialists had a field day picking apart the study.

Bottom line: make time to read the paper especially its U-shaped curve as well as its accompanying editorial (which views the same curve as being more J-shaped in nature) before making any decisions.  Leave your mind open to new (interpretation of) data.  And avoid listening to those 30 second sound bites that poorly summarize complicated studies.

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can not taking care of low iron and low vitamin D be dangerous and land you in hospital

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USPSTF Gives D Grade to Vitamin D

Clever title, huh?  Kinda made you want to read this post, right?  We're living in such a fast-paced world that we learn via sound bites and 140 characters at a time.  We want & need every morsel of information summarized neatly into easily digestible bits.  Unfortunately, truth & science aren't always so malleable to this way of learning.

Case in point is the United States Preventive Services Task Force's Clinical Guideline regarding vitamin D & calcium supplementation to prevent fractures in adults as published early online yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.  Up until recently, we lumped everything & everyone together stating that calcium 500-1,000mg daily + vitamin D 400-800 units was good, regardless of age, gender, and risk factors.

Well, as the USPSTF attempted to explain in their guidelines, the evidence for primary fracture prevention in both men and premenopausal women is woefully scant.  Thus, they weren't able to analyze risks vs benefits.  And when it comes to noninstitionalized postmenopausal women, the data for benefit in primary fracture reduction using calcium doses greater than 1,000mg daily and vitamin D greater than 400 units daily, was inadequate to analyze risks vs benefits.

Before I get to the USPSTF's D grade, let's be clear as to how finely they're dividing the population & parsing their words, almost as if in legalese.  For instance, this Recommendation Statement only addresses primary fracture prevention, that is in those men & women who've never had an osteoporotic fracture before.  In this statement getting all the press, there's no attempt to address secondary prevention in those who've already sustained a hip or vertebral or wrist fracture.  Furthermore, there's no mention of institutionalized postmenopausal women, just noninstitutionalized postmenopausal women & premenopausal women (along w/men).  

So it's for those non-institutionalized postmenopausal women who take less than 1,000mg daily of calcium and/or less than 400 units daily of vitamin D for whom the USPSTF was unable to find any benefit.  Worse there was some concern over an increase risk for kidney stones.  Thus they recommended against this dose in this group since they can't recommend something that offers no benefit while putting that person at risk, no matter how small.  Check out the editorial for more info.

If this appears to be an about-face from their December 2011 meta-analysis & June 2012 draft, both published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, read the conclusion carefully: Combined vitamin D and calcium supplementation can reduce fracture risk, but the effects may be smaller among community-dwelling older adults than among institutionalized elderly persons. Appropriate dose and dosing regimens, however, require further study (italics mine).

Bottom line: as much as I want to be able to make a blanket statement about vitamin D & calcium, the evidence doesn't allow for it.  So if you're a community-dwelling postmenopausal female, don't take small doses of calcium (less than 1,000mg daily) or vitamin D (less than 400 units daily).  But what about larger doses? What about men, institutionalized postmenopausal women, and premenopausal women?  What do they do?  Either wait for studies to be published (if they're more concerned about potential side effects) or "Go Big or Go Home".

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