Where I live, at latitude 60 N, the primary care docs have been recommending for years that ALL adults take 5000 IU of vitamin D3 daily… They only started bothering to test and actually fine-tune the doses more recently and still don’t do it all that much… The link between widespread deficiency of vitamin D is suspect in some research in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes…
To me it’s pretty clear why we see such widespread deficiency, just simply because we spend so much less time outdoors than our bodies are designed for and our predecessors did… Vitamin D is almost a perfect measure of that…
I guess that is why they put vitamin D in foods now. The almond milk I drink a lot of supposedly has 45% of daily vitamin D needs in it (and I drink more than one serving a day), and I eat a lot of egg yolks and salmon, and do spend about 30-45 minutes a day outdoors walking to and from the bus stop. Though 45 minutes is a few drops in the bucket compared to our anscestors…
I think the recommended daily allowance of dietary vitamin D may be a pretty poor indicator of your bodies actual needs or most effective route to get it… That’s just my thoughts though…
And walking outdoors certainly helps, though when most of us do that were actually getting minimal sun exposure through all our clothes, under our hats, behind he shade of buildings, etc…
Ive been told that even in the sunniest parts of the USA most adults are D deficient
My blood work early February showed my D3 low at 21.7 even though I was taking a once a week dose of 50,000 units. I then went to Vitamin Shoppe and picked up Solgar 10,000 unit daily and that change 3 months later put me at 55.8 (range being
32.0 - 100.0). Don’t know if I can get checked next appointment or have to retest in a year.
I read in a Swedish newspaper yesterday that doctors are now saying that avoiding sun and using sunblock may be as bad as smoking and can reduce one’s life by up to 2 years. They gave construction workers as a good example and said that one should spend reasonable time in the sun (up to 1 hr per day) in the middle of the day when the rays are the best. This kind of goes against all finding up to now.
Personally not avoiding sun at all and use sunblock only until I get a tan which will prevent the burn. Besides that I take a spoon of Norwegian cod liver oil+ a spoon of honey+fresh juice from ½ lemon every morning, a combination that has saved me from all colds and viruses during the last 2 years and my vitamin D on satisfying levels. May not work as good for everybody though.
I agree on the avoiding the sun. I’ve been anywhere from 7-17 in the past year no matter how much vitamin D, plus the Rx for the Uber stuff. No matter what I do I don’t absorb ( I also have gastroparesis). We are ordering a sun lamp to see if it helps…it has a filter on it to prevent damage but is still supposed to allow the D to get to me…we will see…
I think I’d be more concerned about the heatstroke than the skin cancer! I live in south-central Texas. We start getting temperatures in the 90sF/30sC usually around mid-April that last through September. They peak in June/July hitting around 110F/43C. I pretty much just don’t leave the house between 10am and 6pm if I can avoid it.
It’s no wonder I’m on a prescription of 50,000U Vitamin D3 supplement 1x weekly with recommendation to take an additional OTC 2,500U daily.
Same temperatures here and I hibernate, too, between the hours of 10am and 5pm. We have an extra problem in that there is a hole in the ozone layer. Although there is adequate sunshine here I take a VitD tablet daily.
The prescription once a week stuff is a waste. As I said above, I took 10,000 units/day (from Costco) for like nine months before I responded and normalized my levels. It is important to understand that Vit D3 is fat soluble and accumulates in your body fat slowly so it takes quite a while, it isn’t a circulating vitamin. And also important is to take the supplement with dietary fat, that helps you absorb it. That is one of the reasons a low fat diet can be a disaster, you won’t absorb important nutrients if you don’t have dietary fat to assist in their digestion and absorption.
The vast majority of my patients are successful in increasing their Vitamin D levels to therapeutic levels after 8 weeks of once-weekly doses of 50,000 IU of Vitamin D3 (taken with a meal containing fat) followed by daily doses of 1000 to 3000 IU. Sorry to hear Vitamin D supplementation was so difficult for you, Brian.
Vitamin D supplementation did work for me but it took heavy doses over an extended period of time. I have found that with daily doses of 4000 IUs I can maintain a normal level.
Like most things physiological, this is a highly individual thing. I started with 2,000 units. That didn’t produce much result so we upped it to 5,000. That produced some improvement but not nearly enough. We increased it to 10,000 and that did the trick nicely. The entire process took maybe 2 months, and 10,000 has kept me in range now for a couple of years. I suspect that your pattern is an outlier.
Strange. I am outside (in Central Florida) in the sun 3x a day for 3/4 of an hour each time. 6-7 a.m., noon, and 6-7 p.m. walking my dog and I am vitamin D deficient. My diet is very balanced re: carbs, fat, and fiber. My Dr. just put me on 1000u of D-3 a day.
