Learn something valuable today about Vitamin D...
 

I just had a complete physical. My tests were thankfully all good except for I was low on Vitamin D. I questioned that since I am outside all the time. The doctor explained since I am older, my body has problem using the sun's natural "D" and I need to take supplements.

Doing alittle research on low vitamin D I found out some interesting symptoms. If you have a severe deficiency, like me, some of the signs are:

*muscle pain without explanation
*depression
*chronic fatique

etc.

Also this was very interesting:

If you have constant pain in muscles and bones, for no obvious reason, you should visit your doctor and check your vitamin D levels in blood. This blood test does not take long, and it is quite sophisticated. If your vitamin D levels are lower than normal, you will be given vitamin D supplements to use. You will also be given some good advice on how to get vitamin D in the natural way (unless you live in a cold weather country, with not much sun).

Vitamin D deficiency symptoms can be very misleading. Take depression for example. Depression is one of the symptoms of long-term deficiency. However, this problem can be caused by many other factors. The causes of depression can be both physical and non-physical. To determine the causes, you will need to visit your doctor. It is always better to eliminate the physical causes first. Blood tests will be done in order to determine the nature of your condition. Some people have been treating depression with antidepressants that turned out to be completely useless. This means that the cause was physical, rather than mental. It is always recommended to visit your doctor, before you start taking any medications or remedies.

And very interesting....

Obesity can also be related to vitamin D deficiency. If you are trying to lose weight, but you are not getting anywhere with your diet – perhaps your vitamin D levels are low. According to several researches, vitamin D deficiency can prevent you from losing weight, no matter how hard you exercise. Patients who have recovered from vitamin D deficiency say that it is much easier to lose weight, now that their vitamin D levels are normal again.

Not that this is my excuse but it may be an explanation. I am picking up some supplements today to start taking.

When I was getting blood work done about two years ago, the doctor surprised me by telling me I was dangerously low in Vitamin D. Just like you, I was dumbfounded at how that could possibly happen.

My wife's was low as well. She rides 10-15 hours a week with no sun screen. I think it is a myth that all you need is 15 minuties a day in the sun for your D.

Just make sure when you supplement to use D3 and use sublingual or drops for max effect. There are many advocates who say the 1000mg dose is too low and many go as high as 5000-10,000mg per day. I normally use 2000mg / per day.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...-nutrient.aspx

Thanks good advice. The doctor told me at least 1000 IU but told me to start out at 600 IU. Think I'll risk it and start at 1000 and see what happens.

I didn't realize this was so common!

Pam - if you use such a low dose - get the sublingual which dissolve under your tongue or use vitamin d drops - you will get better absorption. vitamin shoppe has a good selection.

http://www.vitaminshoppe.com/store/e...jsp?id=VS-2714

I am surprised reading this, i always though Vitamin D was one of things you could just ignore if you Spent some time out side each day.

Thanks pam :)

Yes, thank you SOCAL because I was also tested low in Vit D a few months ago but I've been taking pills because my doctor was kind of like "meh go to supermarket and buy Vitamin D" when I asked what should I take.

And thank you PAM for this thread. You actually gave me more info than my stupid doctor did when I asked him questions. Could be why he's not my doctor anymore.

Yeah, my dr. said something about absorption and how some forms are better than others and can also inhibit other supplements from being absorbed. I know, not very helpful, but it's something to look for you in your research.

So eye opening. This explains a lot for me....thank you so much for posting.

Depends on where you live. The sun has to have a direct enough angle for you to be able to make any vitamin D, no matter how sunny it is. Here in Pennsylvania USA, it will take until the end of March before any vitamin D synthesis can happen. Latitude and season play a rote in Australia as well -- and, of course, the sunscreens that many folks use to prevent skin cancer block vitamin D synthesis.
Tergal may want to read "The high prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency across Australian populations is only partly explained by season and latitude." in Environ Health Perspect. 2007 Aug;115(8):1132-9. For Sayre, "Influence of season and latitude on the cutaneous synthesis of vitamin D3: exposure to winter sunlight in Boston and Edmonton will not promote vitamin D3 synthesis in human skin." in J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1988 Aug;67(2):373-8.

(Can you tell I'm supposed to be giving a lecture on Vitamin D in a few weeks?)

shhh you should have just left us all bewildered at you amazing memory :)

Thank you for posting this! Definitely something I'm going to look into. Living in Sweden as I do and with the symptoms you've listed and I have, it's a distinct possibility this is a problem.

I was diagnosed, without a blood test, by the VA hospital as having osteomalacia, aka, rickets in my right knee due to a vitamin D defiency. I was born in 1975, when kids still were allowed to go play outside without sunscreen for hours on end. I drank vitamin D milk. The VA doc told me I needed to spend more time in the sun. I told him I worked out side, so that wasnt helping.

Jeneralist - any downside to taking a Vit D supplement daily?

Maybe that's what is missing....

pretty hard to get too much of it, but it IS fat soluble so be sure you are also eating healthy fats to get the best absorption.

There is research linking it directly to belly fat.

The RDA for Vitamin D for adults is currently 600-800 IU/day depending on age. I wouldn't be taking any more than that unless you have had a blood test (Serum 25(OH)D) and found to be deficient.

The exact values for deficiency and toxicity are still being debated, but a recent review Heaney (a very trusted expert in my opinion) concludes "Serum 25(OH)D values below 120  nmol/l (48  ng/ml) are associated with preventable disease and are therefore indicative of deficiency. The upper limit of the normal range can be set at 225  nmol/l (90  ng/ml), although toxicity is rare below 500  nmol/l (200  ng/ml)"

There's no evidence that liquid drops are any better than solid dose forms, but D3 is generally preferred over D2.

This subject is fascinating... so much to know and so little I knew. I live in Southern California... I am outside everyday and in the Spring/Summer get high doses of sun exposure. My Vit D was extremely low so I have a severe deficiency and I asked how is that possible. Easy answer - age and prior over exposure. My skin is damaged from many years of laying out and trying to be tanned. It no longer processes D like it should, plus as we age, nothing works right...

I probably picked up the wrong stuff - went to Walgreens and they had the 2000 IU D3 softgels on sale so I bought two bottles. I'm hoping that is going to do the trick. I will be tested again in 4 months so I will let you know. I am very interested in everyone elses experience and any information you experts can provide.

I hate taking any pills of any sort, not even aspirin. When I had cancer surgery, I refused pain pills of any sort. I started these D tabs because I am hopeful it will help with muscle fatique and cramping as well as depression. Boy I hope this is the answer. Jeneralist & Mikehatten, any other information you can provide will be helpful.

I have to say I find most of the vitamin d thing hooey. All of a sudden two years ago the entire world is now deficient on vitamin d. It's gotten so bad now that blue cross blue shield will no longer pay for the test. And every one I know who has had the test was low

I smell a rat on this one in general

Pam - go get the drops... the 5000iu dose is 5 drops - so 1000mg per drop.. 1-2 drops per day and your done.

Meaning a D deficiency contributes to belly fat? Or too much D contributes to belly fat?

Vesteroid -- yes, Vitamin D is the flavor of the month in medicine. You've probably seen this before. I remember that when I was growing up, Vitamin C was the miracle vitamin that would cure everything; then Vitamin E. And when studies were conducted looking at what happened when people took supplements for these vitamins, it turns out that not only did the studies not support any benefit to using them -- it seemed that the supplements also increased the risk of certain problems.

Vitamin D got "on the radar" when studies started coming out of Australia looking at skin cancer. Malignant melanoma is a big problem in Oz, and researchers expected to find that people who used sunscreen consistently would have a reduced risk of skin cancer.

Sure enough, people who used sunscreen or otherwise avoided the sun had lower rates of skin cancer. But, oddly, they didn't have lower rates of DEATH from skin cancer -- as if the folks who were in the sun were getting something that helped keep the cancer survivable/manageable/less nasty.

"WTF?" said researchers. (OK, they probably said something closer to, "This anomalous result suggests the need for further investigation.")

So then came studies looking at cancer rates among people given vitamin D supplements. There were a few old studies lying around, designed to look mainly at osteoporosis, where folks were given calcium, Vitamin D, both, or neither. Hmm, when folks went back to look at the old data, they found lower cancer rates in the vitamin D groups.

Then rheumatologists got in the act, and tried giving vitamin D to people who had been told they had fibromyalgia and/or chronic fatigue. A lot of those folks started saying they had more energy.

Prospective studies designed to see the effects of vitamin D supplementation will have a lot more weight than chart reviews of studies already conducted that were designed to look at other things. Many of those are under way now. Still, it's easy to be hopeful about vitamin D even after being disappointed about other vitamins in the past: you can see that the effects of foods that contain certain vitamins can be different than the vitamin taken as a supplement. But vitamin D generally comes from sunlight -- and "what else can there be in sunlight?"

(Digression: there IS something else in sunlight that we haven't tracked down yet. Multiple sclerosis is a lot more common the farther you get from the equator -- but giving folks [and experimental animals] vitamin D doesn't keep them from getting MS)

There can be. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin. It gets stored in the body -- which makes sense for something that comes from sunlight. Your body literally stores it for a rainy day (or a long winter). If you take too much for too long, you can seriously damage yourself. It starts off with nausea and vomiting; if you don't catch it at that stage, your muscles, um, stop. Including the heart.

So, how much is too much? For MOST people, 2000-4000 units daily is OK. People with serious deficiencies may be prescribed 50,000 units once a week for several weeks, and then switch to a 2000 unit daily dose. Folks with kidney or liver problems can reach toxic levels more quickly.

Interestingly, you can't get too much vitamin D from sunlight; your skin just stops making it. But it is possible to overdose when taken as a dietary supplement or in food.

Disclaimers apply; I'm a doctor, but I'm not your doctor. It pays to get checked out by a doctor before beginning any health regimen....

best disclaimer ever.

and thank you for the information. MY doctor hates me , so i will make sure i bring this up at my next check up.

I wonder if daylight savings time has any effect on vitamin D levels?
Saskatchewan has the highest MS rates in Canada, and a few weeks ago my better half was chewing the fat with one of his fellow MS bike tour riders about the reasons for it. The other fellow wondered if the fact that this is the only province to not go on daylight savings time had anything to do with it. I think there might be something to it. When we lived in Alberta, at roughly the same latitude, we spent a lot more time outside on summer evenings because there was that one extra hour of light. Here, you have to pack in a bike ride at 9:00 pm, which doesn't give you much time if you don't get home until 6:00.