Ten Reasons Everything We Thought We Knew About Vitamin D Is Wrong: Part 4

The Rack Athletic Performance Center

Vitamin D, is in fact, not a vitamin.  Vitamins are things that cannot be made by humans.  Vitamin D is a secosteroid hormone.  The active from of Vitamin D, 1,25-D, is the powerful steroid hormone made by the human body.

Number 4: 

Healthy People Are Not Deficient in Hormone D

Centered around a misunderstanding and poor interpretation of the available data, with “vitamin d” and especially supplemental “vitamin d” that more is always better.  When looking through the large amounts of vitamin d research one can repeatedly find studies presenting inconclusive associative data and simply explaining the lack of results away by claiming subjects should have just taken more of the vitamin d.  

The FDA in the United States allows vitamin D to be added to grains, pasta, breakfast cereals, milk, and milk products such as cheese and butters.  Canada requires milk, evaporated milk, powdered milk, goat milk, and margarine to be fortified with vitamin D.  Vitamin D is a fat-soluble molecule that can be stored for weeks or months inside cells of fat and organs like the liver.  Water-soluble vitamins need to be replaced regularly in the body, whereas fat-soluble vitamins are eliminated more slowly than water-soluble vitamins.  It is relatively easy to maintain an adequate level of vitamin D in the body.  For example, if you are an individual at 26% body fat and begin a training program in which you drop down to 18% Body Fat, stored vitamin D is actually liberated from adipose as humans lose body fat.  A “healthy” human should liberate btw1200 and 1500 iu’s of stored vitamin d daily.  With the majority of the public still consuming large amounts of products fortified with vitamin d, it is difficult to find people who have a natural level of vitamin D in their bodies. Consequently, the healthy range for 25- D obtained from bloodwork has been adjusted upward, over the last few years and decades, to reflect the fact that people consume fortified dairy products. The FDA now suggests that people maintain a level of 25-D between 30-32 ng/ml, which is in the range at which it becomes immunosuppressive. 

With the abundance of added vitamin d to most of the American diet it is difficult to now know and understand what levels of vitamin d the human body would maintain under normal circumstances. A study which tested the level of 25-D in 90 healthy, Chilean women showed that 27% of the premenopausal and 60% of the postmenopausal women had 25-D levels under 20 ng/ml.  A study on healthy Bangladeshi women found that approximately 80% of the women had a level of 25-D under 16 ng/ml.  Yet, Dr. Holick has advised the FDA that the daily requirement of vitamin D should be in the range of 4,000 IU…ten times the previous Recommended Daily Allowance. 

Rob Jacobs
USAW, PICP, MA

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