Vitamin D & Health

Until recently, I've never been much into supplements.  The only supplementing I did was protein and the occasional multi-vitamin, if it was cheap enough.  My mad fitness-scientist cousin, PJ, has long preached the value of high-quality vitamin supplementation and food.  If it's grass-fed beef, he'll eat it, but if he suspects the cow had a runny nose and got some penicillin along the way, forget it; he'll take the ocean salmon instead.

He recommended Vitamin D to me because of research recently which suggests the RDA of 200-600 IUs per day is far too low.  I thought back to Nutrition 201, remembered that D is one of the fat-soluble vitamins, meaning you CAN overdose on it, because fat-soluble vitamins are stored, and not simply excreted the way Vitamin C, Vitamin B, et al are.  But then I remembered that RDAs aren't based on much more than committees' ideas of what's probably a good idea, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Vitamin D is a heavy lifter in building bone, immune functions, preventing inflammation, and is actually a precursor hormone, and not a vitamin as we have historically understood them, and its purpose and benefits are only recently being discovered.

I've been taking 10,000 IUs per day for about 5 weeks, and I had a meeting scheduled with my doctor on Monday of this week.  Monday morning, I was making a list of things to remember to ask him about, and one was the increasing spots of vitiligo on my hands and upper arms.  I looked down at them to see how much they had grown (they had increased significantly in the last 2 years), and they were gone.  Where previously they were easily viewable, I now can't even see them.

I mentioned that to my doctor later that day, and the first thing out of his mouth was, "Have you been taking Vitamin D?" We chatted about what acceptable levels of supplementation are, and he said for most people, he's been recommending around 50,000 IUs per week, and if for certain diseases, he'll recommend 50,000 2 or 3 times per week.

I feel better since taking the bigger doses of Vitamin D, and my vitiligo disappearing can't be attributed to anything else I can think of, but I really don't want to overdose, either.  They had to take a blood sample, since the lab lost my previous sample, and I got a call yesterday from the doctor's office saying they had also run a Vitamin D level test on the sample.  Ideal levels are between 30 and 100 ng/mL.  With 10,000 IU per day for 5 weeks, my level was 52.

I don't seem to be at risk of overdosing. And based on my increased energy levels of late, there's no doubt we'll find plenty more benefits of it.  So talk to your doctor about it, and then do your own research!