Vitamin D supplements liquid, topical, repletion ideas

What does vitamin D do for the body?

This essential nutrient is called a vitamin, but dietary vitamin D is actually a precursor hormone — the building block of a powerful steroid hormone in your body called calcitriol. It’s been known for many years that vitamin D is critical to the health of our bones and teeth, but deeper insight into D’s wider role in our health is quite new.

Vitamin D works in concert with other nutrients and hormones in your body to support healthy bone renewal — an ongoing process of mineralization and demineralization which, when awry, shows up as rickets in children and osteomalacia (“soft bones”) or osteoporosis (“porous bones”) in adults.

Researchers are discovering that D also promotes normal cell growth and differentiation throughout the body, working as a key factor in maintaining hormonal balance and a healthy immune system. It appears that calcitriol actually becomes part of the physical composition of cells, assisting in the buildup and breakdown of healthy tissue — in other words, regulating the processes that keep you well.

What’s more, evidence from studies tracking the prevalence of disease by geography and nationality shows clear links between vitamin D deficiency and obesity, insulin resistance, heart disease, certain cancers, and depression. Since most of these problems take many years to manifest, vitamin D deficiency has been overlooked by many providers for a very long time. I test all of my patients, and have been surprised to find that more than 85% come up with a vitamin D deficiency.

Your body can’t create vitamin D on its own. Instead, it’s designed to make it through sun exposure. In theory, you can make an ample supply of vitamin D with as little as a couple of hours per week in the sun — provided the UVB rays are strong enough. You can also ingest D through food, especially fatty fish like wild–harvested salmon. Plus, lots of foods are fortified nowadays, so vitamin D deficiency should be an easy problem to solve, right? But the truth is, we’re just not getting enough, and so many of us aren’t even close.
Few foods naturally contain or are fortified with supplemental vitamin D. For example, an 8-ounce glass of whole milk is fortified with 100 IU (international units) of vitamin D – just 10 percent of what the most conservative vitamin D researchers now say we need daily. In contrast, sun exposure to the skin makes thousands of units of vitamin D naturally in a relatively short period of time.

Vitamin D supplements are an alternative means of producing vitamin D when regular, non-burning sun exposure is not possible.

Humans spend less time in the sun today than at any point in human history – which is why more than 1 billion people worldwide are vitamin D deficient.

Consequences of low Vitamin D

Rickets: Rickets is caused in children by deficiency of Vitamin D, calcium or phosphorus. It used to be the most well known of the symptoms of vitamin d deficiency but has not been a big problem since food manufacturers started fortifying milk and other foods with small doses of Vitamin D.

Depression: There is some evidence to show that low Vitamin D levels have an association with depression, and studies have shown that Vitamin D3 has helped reduce seasonal depression during winter months. Lack of UVB Rays from the sun may be part of the reason for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Weakened immune system: Most cells in the body contain receptor sites for Vitamin D and these include immune system cells. Vitamin D has been shown to enhance the activity of those cells, and to decrease chances of developing autoimmune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis.

Mysterious health issues: Vitamin D has many varied effects on the cells in the body, and if you are experiencing any mysterious health symptoms then you should have a blood test done to make sure you are not Vitamin D deficient.

Long term symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency

Osteoporosis: An important role of Vitamin D is regulating calcium absorption and calcium balance in the bones, and a well known symptom of vitamin d deficiency is weakened and brittle bones, where the severe cases end up with osteoporosis.

Cancer: Vitamin D deficiency has in research studies been shown to be highly correlated with many forms of cancer. This makes the recommendation of people avoiding the sun in order to prevent skin cancer to be extremely bogus, since avoiding sun would cause low vitamin d levels and therefore increase risks of developing other cancer forms.

Please find the dose that your health provider recommended you take and make sure your blood levels are monitored regularly if you are on a high dose supplement.

Suggestions for my patients:
Please consider all of the other calcium containing supplements when you view these suggestions.
Vitamin D levels — what’s really optimal? >100 ng/mL Excessive vitamin D (see note on toxicity) 50–70 ng/mL Proposed optimal range 30–50 ng/mL Suboptimal but still normal range <30 ng/mL Deficient <20 ng/mL Overt vitamin D deficiency <10 ng/mL Seriously deficient
Vitamin D level:

<10 level 50,000 IU weekly or 10,000 IU daily 10-20 level 5000 IU daily 20-30 level 2000 IU daily 30-50 level 1000 IU daily 50-70 level 400 IU daily for 12-16 weeks, then return for bloodwork. Levels over 30 are considered normal Levels 50-70 are considered optimal If you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, the upper daily limit for pregnant women is 4000 IU daily. FDA Disclaimer The statements and products shown on this website have not been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Those seeking treatment for a specific disease should consult a qualified integrative physician prior to using our products if possible.