Sunlight and Vitamin D

I had a blood test recently and received the results this morning. There were two results 8 nmdol and 243 nmdol. The gp is looking into which result is accurate.

I'm alarmed by either result. I'm taking VitD3 5000iu daily and have been for a few months so it can't be 8? 243 seems amazingly high though. I was expecting something around 100.

Pehaps neither is accurate. How could they report two results anyway with only one name? Request a different lab - you'll never trust either result, no matter what you are told.

Good point. Apparently 243 is "correct". Don't believe a word of it.

I'm going to have another blood test. If that comes back higher than 200 what should I do? Stop taking Vitd3 5000? I know Jelinek has said taking Vit d and combining that with low sat fat diet makes the chance of a relapse almost zero. Why would my body absorb the vit d at such a high rate. I read something on thisisms which alarmed me about the dangers of overdosing Vit d.

There was a recent discussion on this - I've pasted Prof Jeleniks response here see the end of the post for his comments that we should aim for levels between 150-225 nmol. My level is around 210 and my GP is happy with that.


Re: Problem with too much Vitamin D?
by George » Tue Nov 02, 2010 11:58 am

Hi Elizabeth

This is a tricky area, and I have tried to find information backing up Ashton's claim that you need calcium supplements if you take vitamin D for some years without success. You will notice that there are other posts on this site about the dangers of calcium supplementation (eg http://www.overcomingmultiplesclerosis. ... mentation/, http://www.overcomingmultiplesclerosis. ... pplements/). From my reading of the literature, it is extremely unlikely that you can do any harm with supplements up to a level of 10,000IU a day. The biggest risk in fact with high dose supplementation is TOO HIGH a calcium level (see http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind/), so it makes no sense to supplement with calcium. There is certainly no documented risk of bones shrinking or thinning with vitamin D, quite the opposite: vitamin D is necessary to prevent osteoporosis. The National Institutes of Health say that a toxic blood level of vitamin D is above 500nmol/L and no-one taking the doses we recommend is going to reach that level. We recommend staying around the 150-225nmol/L mark.

Hope that helps

Be well

George

Hi I have taken nearly 2 years to get to 224nmol/L. Yay!

I recently went to a GP who specialises in hormones/diet etc and after initially passing on a warning re high D3 levels, after the initial consult she told me to maintiain it and continue to take 10,000IU/day.

I did lots of research before that appointment because I thought I was going to have to defend my stand but I found NO evidence of any adverse effects of high supplementation and infact a huge margin of safety. As a result I am very comfortable with my level even if it goes higher over summer while I get sun as well.

Along with the OMS references, thhe info I found was very easy to come by simply by Googling the subject and looking at the supporting papers presented by the sources. My search was "Vit D3 toxicity", it was well worth the effort to see for myself the evidence.

Thanks, that eases my mind. Something that reading www.thisisms.com never does.