Vitamin D is one of the most important micronutrients. It is crucially involved with immune system function, as well as with maintaining appropriate calcium deposition throughout the body. It is obviously involved with numerous other processes in our cells, our tissues, our organs, and our body in general.
If you would look at the molecular structure of vitamin D, you would recognize that it is almost identical to cholesterol. In fact, another name for vitamin D is cholecalciferol. The “chole” part of the name demonstrates the cholesterol connection, and the “calciferol” part of the name demonstrates the calcium connection.
Vitamin D can be found at high levels in certain foods, especially fatty fish, fish liver oils, beef, liver, and egg yolks. Many foods such as milk products and cereals are fortified with vitamin D.
Vitamin D can be manufactured in our skin, derived from cholesterol, with appropriate exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight. However, to get high levels of vitamin D production in the skin from sunlight, this would necessitate very significant exposure to sunlight. So, for most people, sunlight will not provide sufficient vitamin D levels.
Most people will end up needing to take a vitamin D supplement in order to have appropriate vitamin D levels. I usually recommend starting a good natural multivitamin with an additional vitamin D3 supplement 5000 units per day. Make sure to take these nutritional supplements with food, not with a glass of water, not before a meal, not after a meal. With a meal. In the middle of the meal.
Blood levels below 30 ng/L are unhealthy. Blood levels above 80 ng/L are optimal. Even though many laboratories will consider blood levels above 100 ng/L as toxic, no real scientific evidence exists to support such a negative labeling.
If you begin a good natural multivitamin with an additional vitamin D3 supplement 5000 units per day as I mentioned, and your blood levels don’t increase appropriately, there may be a problem. First off, since vitamin D is fat soluble, sometimes it builds in the body slowly over time. Therefore, sometimes it takes many months for blood levels to become optimal.
However, if blood levels do not become optimal even over an extended period of time, the issue typically is the body over-utilizing the vitamin D, and not necessarily the person needs more than the 5000 units per day.
Since vitamin D is derived from cholesterol, anything that affects cholesterol in a negative fashion can end up negatively affecting vitamin D. Statin drugs, as they block normal cholesterol production, can lower the production of vitamin D. Any sterol hormone problem can also negatively affect vitamin D. This would include cortisol, the stress hormone, in both men and women, testosterone in men, and estradiol and progesterone in women.
Since cortisol problems can be connected to almost any other metabolic disturbance in the body causing stress in the body, sometimes finding the underlying cause of the low vitamin D not responding to oral supplementation can take some time and effort.
In my practice, I’ve become pretty adept at determining the true cause of a low vitamin D level not responding to oral supplementation, and by determining this true cause, correcting it over time. Since vitamin D is so important to overall health, this usually is connected to improving overall metabolic health.
