I recently wrote a great article about The Vitamin D Myth. Maintaining proper vitamin D is important for overall health.
Vitamin D helps with calcium absorption for keeping your bones strong and preventing osteoporosis but it also helps with supporting a healthy immune system and many other important bodily functions.
I want to share some exciting news that I have seen with some of my patients. I have been proud of my Spoon Full of Nutrition Super D3 for some time.
Is Low Vitamin D Genetic?
There is no doubt that Super D3 truly a high quality vitamin D and makes changes in the lives of my patients. I have a patient whose genetic testing showed that she was not able to produce any vitamin D. That’s right 0%!
That means that genetically, she inherited genes from both her mother and father that made her body incapable of producing Vitamin D.
There is a difference between heterozygous and homozygous when it comes to genetics. For example if you are heterozygous for vitamin D production, you will have one gene that can produce vitamin D and the other may not.
When you are homozygous for vitamin D, either both genes will produce vitamin D or both genes won’t. It’s pretty straight forward.
Some people who are heterozygous can still produce some vitamin D. Their levels may be low but their body can still manufacture some vitamin D so they may or may not need supplementation to maintain healthy vitamin D levels.
This patient was homozygous for genes that produced vitamin D and could not produce any. That is what I’m so excited about. She brought her levels up to a 76 when tested after 2 months of Super D3 supplementation.
That is a 76% increase. Another patient went from 40 to 79! That’s a 39 point increase in Vitamin D levels in just 2 months.
What are Healthy Vitamin D Ranges?
Remember, functional ranges of healthy vitamin D are 50-75. That is why it is important to always check your vitamin D levels.
Just because you are supplementing with vitamin D and get to a certain range doesn’t mean that your body will always maintain that amount.
If you don’t test, you don’t know. I have a patient who misread the label and took too much Super D3. When we retested, her levels were 103. That is a huge increase from when she had Vitamin D levels of 29.
Yes, that is too high. Like I said, she misread the label. I told her what needed to be done and she was able to bring it down into a healthy range.
Can too much Vitamin D be Bad or Toxic?
Vitamin D is fat soluble. Therefore, it can store in fat. Fat soluble vitamins include A, D, E and K. Since these vitamins can be stored in fat, anyone taking them should monitor their levels over time.
Just as low levels of a vitamin D can cause health problems, so can hypervitaminosis D. Hypervitaminosis D is a toxic situation and can be harmful if present for a long time.
Signs and Symptoms of Hypervitaminosis D
- Too much calcium in the blood
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- Vomiting
- Osteopenia
- Osteoporosis
- Weakness.
About the patient who misread the label and took too much vitamin D: We had her quit taking her vitamin D for a period of time, retested her levels and worked her into a healthy value that was much better than when her level was 29.
Super D3 works very well for most patients and I’m proud to offer it for an affordable cost.
Benefits of Vitamin D
- Increased calcium absorption helping maintain healthy bones
- Osteoporosis prevention
- Decrease muscle and joint pain
- Prevent cancers
- Improves blood pressure
- Helps prevent heart attacks
- Beneficial for rheumatoid arthritis
- Supports healthy immune system function
- Aids in sleep quality
“Activated vitamin D is one of the most potent inhibitors of cancer cell growth,” says Michael F. Holick, PhD, MD, who heads the Vitamin D, Skin, and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine. “It also stimulates your pancreas to make insulin. It regulates your immune system.”
Consider the following study:
- In a report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in February 2004, researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland showed that elderly women who took a vitamin D supplement plus calcium for three months reduced their risk of falling by 49% compared with consuming calcium alone. Those women who had fallen repeatedly in the past seemed to gain the most benefit from vitamin D.
Falling is a major risk factor for death in the geriatric population. Prevention is key and monitored supplementation with vitamin D should be a primary focus for anyone that is striving to be healthy.
It should be obvious that vitamin D is very, very important when it comes to maintaining and preserving one’s health.
Health is Happiness,
Dr. Keith Currie
