I take 10,000iu per day and have so for over 2 years. My level is 70 on a scale of 20-80.
I take 4,000 IU right now since its winter. Planning on dropping to 2,000 IU during the summer.
However I walk to work, 2.2 miles and I do live in San Diego so I get sun naturally.
Vitamin D is perhaps the most neglected supplement because of the lack of sunlight people get nowadays. The more sedentary you are, the more time you spend inside, the less Vitamin-D you have.
You get it from salmon and othe fatty fish, and fish oils as well.
I know this is an old post but I figured I would document my experiences for posterity. I saw a doctor a few months back for low energy, hypersomnia (sleeping 12 hours each night) and potential narcolepsy (falling asleep anywhere, napping everyday). Had a ton of blood work done and found the D to be low. I was prescribed 50,000 IUs once per keep for 6 weeks and 2000 each other day.
After the 6 weeks I’m sleeping 8 hours each night and haven’t napped in weeks. I’m now on a maintenance of 5,000 IU per day. As shown by the high weekly dose, clearly that supports the previous poster who takes a loading dose. I believe it would have something to do with the way the vitamin is absorbed. Also my Doctor tells me it supports so many other functions he never knows when Vit D will cure a patients issues but he always makes sure its taken care of and is never surprised when it fixes things.
I’ve overdosed on Vitamin D before (trying to help out the psoriasis/eczema on my hand). What happened is that my lips got dehydrated and wouldn’t rehydrate no matter how much water I drank or what I used on them. I think I was around the 8k/day dose. I don’t know if OD’ing is bad on any other levels, but thats what happened to me. It went away after a week or so when I stopped taking it.
Now I’m taking about 4k/day. Try bumping it up per week and just see what happens at higher levels.
On a related note; there was an interesting doco on Discovery about food and evolution called “Primal Connections”. Among other things the presenter went over he talked about vitamin D and skin colour.
Humans started in Africa where there is a lot of sunlight. So vitamin D wasn’t an issue but skin cancer was - so people became dark skinned.
In temperate and cooler climates skin cancer wasn’t an issue but vitamin D was - so people became lighter skinned.
In the Arctic the Inuit don’t get a lot of sunlight due to their clothing but are dark skinned as they get a load of vitamin D from a diet of mostly fish and don’t need to be pale skinned.
lok what were your vit d levels before and after?
First measure you current levels of 25-Hydroxy Vitamin D3. Need to be above 60ng/ml. Ideal range 80-100ng/ml.
You can get this test for about $35 without going through a doctor - you can do online and go to local lab to draw the blood.
Personally during the winter I take 10,000iu - summer I drop down to 5,000iu per day.
I’m taking 50,000IU twice a week as part of loding protocol layed out by Poliquin and my my pharmasist. But I have a compromised immune system as a result of chemotherapy that I’m trying to recover from.
Does anyone have a link or more information on Poliquins vitamin D protocol. I have been feeling like crap low energy etc, I have psoriatc Arthritis just had my blood work done Turns out I have low Vitamin D and slighlty anemic . I am looking for the best protocol. SO far it sounds like a loading phase and then a daily of 5k to may be 10 k a day
Thanks
Thank you