looked at the absorption of Vitamin D as it relates to the type of fats we consume. It also only studied people 65 and older so we can only conclude this applies to seniors, however we can make an assumption that it may apply to everyone. The bottom line is that you don't want to take Vitamin D with say just some fish oils. You need some good fat. Olive oil, sesame oil, coconut, avocado would be great fats to have with Vitamin D.
This is important to know as I some people will just take a vitamin D with a fish oil in the morning. The absorption will be much lower this way than taken with a complete meal.
There is a study making headlines today that we do not need more than 600IU of vitamin D per day. You probably have seen the headlines. What is ridiculous is that this study only looked at bone health as a marker and ignored the thousands of other metabolic functions that vitamin D plays. Ignore the headlines - take your vitamin D and get it measured properly!
I'll let the experts reply to this article, but I cut and pasted below a response to this study from the .
(Do get your vitamin D levels checked, but when you do make sure you do not take any in supplementation form for at least 2-3 days prior to the blood draw. Also it is the 25(OH)D level that is important although in some people the ratio of D2:D3 may be important such as some autoimmune diseases)
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After 13 year of silence, the quasi governmental agency, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), today recommended that a three-pound premature infant take virtually the same amount of vitamin D as a 300 pound pregnant woman. While that 400 IU/day dose is close to adequate for infants, 600 IU/day in pregnant women will do nothing to help the three childhood epidemics most closely associated with gestational and early childhood vitamin D deficiencies: asthma, auto-immune disorders, and, as recently reported in the largest pediatric journal in the world, autism. Professor Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina has shown pregnant and lactating women need at least 5,000 IU/day, not 600.
For many years alternative MDs and practitioners have been against the use of a class of drugs known as bisphosphonates for improving bone density. The most popular bisphosphonates is Fosamax. The bones in our body are constantly breaking down and reforming. It is said by some that every 7 years you have a new skeleton. Bones are dynamic and living not static structures - hence lies the problem with taking bisphosphonates long term. Bones are broken down by cells called osteoclasts and new bone is created by cells called osteoblasts. Bisphosphonates block the formation of osteoclasts so that bone cannot be broken down. This most definitely will increase bone density and in the short run reduce fracture risk. However can you see what the long term consequences of this are? It creates brittle bones. The bone cells become dried out because they should have died and been replaced by new cells, but the bisphosphonates prevented the destruction of old cells. that showed long term use of bisphosphonates increases fracture risk. Read the rest of this entry
For a few years now I've always taken Vitamin D during the winter and felt it helped reduce the incidence and severity of colds I would get. Now a just published shows that giving vitamin D to school children reduced the incidence of influenza. We should all be having our Vitamin D levels checked, especially if we are one to get a lot of colds each year. Taking 1000-2000IU/day through the winter may be your best bet if you cannot get your blood tested. There is almost no risk of developing any toxicity at 2000IU/day, unless you already had high levels of D in your blood.
For a few years now I've always taken Vitamin D during the winter and felt it helped reduce the incidence and severity of colds I would get. Now a just published shows that giving vitamin D to school children reduced the incidence of influenza. We should all be having our Vitamin D levels checked, especially if we are one to get a lot of colds each year. Taking 1000-2000IU/day through the winter may be your best bet if you cannot get your blood tested. There is almost no risk of developing any toxicity at 2000IU/day, unless you already had high levels of D in your blood.
More than a decade ago (even just a few years ago) alternative MDs that used supplements and suggested patients take above the RDA of 400IU/day were called quacks. The inaccurate 'truth' stated over and over again is that above 400IU/day you can get Vitamin D toxicity. Read the rest of this entry
I know so many friends, especially ones with young kids, that have such a fear of sunlight. We need sun and it is my belief that children need to be in the sun, not coated with chemicals that are toxic and cause cancer! because we are lathering on chemicals that then cause oxidative damage to our DNA. The current medical thinking is that the most important reason we want to be in the sun is to increase our Vitamin D levels. Michael Holick MD a researcher at Boston University (an alma mata of mine) has a Read the rest of this entry
When people want to reduce their fracture risk the first thing most people think about is calcium. However there is much more to reducing fractures than just taking calcium. There is plenty of research to show benefits to vitamin D, strontium, boron, silicon, magnesium and other trace minerals for increasing bone density and reducing fracture risk. In addition, one vitamin that you do not hear too much about in the mainstream media for fracture reduction is Vitamin K. Read the rest of this entry
There is an increasing awareness how a large percentage of the population is vitamin D deficient and the ill health effects caused by inadequate Vitamin D levels. If someones blood work comes back as below 30ng/ml I usually dose them with at least 10,000IU/day for 3 weeks then cut down to 5000IU/day for a couple of weeks then wait a week of no supplementation and retest. I usually hear comments about vitamin D toxicity, but as BU researcher Read the rest of this entry
involving data from 18,883 subjects 12 years of age and older, low vitamin D status was associated with increased odds of recent upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). While 24% of subjects with 25(OH)D levels less than 10 ng/mL were found to have had a recent URTI, 20% of those with 25(OH)D levels between 10 and less than 30 ng/mL were found to have a recent URTI, compared to only 17% of those with 25(OH)D levels of 30 ng/mL or greater. The
median serum 25(OH)D for subjects with a recent URTI was 29 ng/mL. After adjusting for potential confounders, low 25(OH)D levels were still found to be associated with recent URTI (OR=1.36), with a greater association found in persons with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (OR=5.67; OR=2.26, respectively). The authors
conclude, "Randomized controlled trials are warranted to explore the effects of vitamin D supplementation on RTI."
"Association between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level and upper respiratory tract infection in the
Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey," Ginde AA, Mansbach JM, Camargo CA Jr, Arch Intern Med, 2009; 169(4): 384-90. (Address: Emergency Medicine Network, Massachusetts General Hospital, 326 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA).
