So ive had low vit D for a while now..

Luckily for me I live in sunny southern california.. where its the middle of december right now and 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky!!

So ive been trying to make a habit of going to the beach and laying out in the sun every morning.

My question is.. I heard that sometimes vitamin D defiency is caused because people have trouble absorbing vitamin D.. is this just from dietary viatmin D or do some people actually have problems turning sunlight into vitamin D??

Also.. lets say you have two people, one person is very deficient in vitamin D and the other has perfect numbers.. if they both stay in the sun for 1 hour, will the deficient person just keep making vitamin d endlessly to get there levels up to normal ? and the normal person just make enough for that day?

Like, could I just sit in the sun and get like 50,000 IU's of vitamin D or something if I stay in the sun for a while??

Moxsum,

I, too live in sunny OC California. All day today I've spent looking online learning about how toxic our air is. If we have a high level of pollution/ozone then the body can't manufacture Vit. D. This is what I'm discovering and am looking at moving to a cleaner state like New Mexico.

We're all different and it depends when and how long you are out in the sun PLUS how much of your body is exposed to the sun. I know of one lady who lives in New Mexico, is outside all day in shorts and skimpy top and still has to supplement with D3. I also know people who live in CA and need to supplement. Only way to be sure is to have the blood test as far as I know.

Vitamin D is made from the action of UVB on the cholesterol near the surface of your skin.
Low uvb levels obviously reduce Vitamin D creation potential. Most UVB gets through the atmosphere when the sun is directly overhead (less atmosphere for the UVB to pass through) you could also try moving to the top of a mountain again being nearer the sun reduces the amount of atmosphere the UVB passes through and therefore more lands on your skin to convert that cholesterol.

Whenever your shadow is longer than you are tall you can be sure there is insufficient UVB reaching ground level to create sufficient Vit d to be effective.

We have to understand that UVB comes together with UVA. UVA although helping with the production of previtamin d also helps by processing the newly made vitamin D into suprasterols so it's totally impossible to get vitamin d toxicity from sun exposure, any vitamin D that isn't absorbed and taken down into the body safe from UVA gets zapped into these suprasterols you can't use so UVA is continually degrading your vitamin d (remember UVA passes through glass/windscreens etc UVB is blocked by glass/windows/windscreens so spend 20mins in the sun and midday making vitamin d and then spend the rest of the day laying in the conservatory, by the patio window, in the car with the windows closed and the sun shining on your skin, and all that time you are only getting UVA your vitamin D near the skin surface is being degraded.

The main particulate that blocks UVB is ozone and at lot of this is generate in towns by traffic pollution but industry also contributes. The ozone can be blown downwind of big cities up to 250miles away so it's pretty difficult to find anywhere totally unpolluted. What makes matters worse in highly industrialized agricultural areas is that fertilizers applied to the soil if heated by the hot sun can also generate ozone and this is a problem for the farmer because it can reduce crop yields but when it's doing that it is also being blown over you while laying in the garden trying to get your vitamin d. You can't stop ozone being blown around and where ever it is, it will lower UVB penetration to ground level and reduce D3 production potential.

Low cholesterol obviously also = low vitamin d creation.
If you are on a statin or on a cholesterol lowering medication then the chances are (if it's working) you will also be reducing your vitamin D production capacity. The same thing happens as you age, your skin gets thinner, thinner skin = less cholesterol = lower vitamin D status and potential. it's one of the reasons that older people live longer the higher their cholesterol levels, they've automatically got a higher vitamin d potential and this means their immune function will inevitably also be higher.


Lowering cholesterol is a good way to age your skin prematurely as you brain is also uses cholesterol reducing cholesterol also ages your brain
Case report.

Grassrootshealth D Action 25(OH)D postal testing service

okay so your saying i wanna be in the sun mid-day but the rest of the day its actually lowering my vitamin D levels??

not sure what my cholesterol level is but im skinny/very little fat?

So then what is the difference between someone who has normal vitamin D levels and takes NO supplements and someone who has low vit D even takin supplements?

Do those people even exist anymore??

When your shadow is longer than you are tall you won't be increasing vitamin D status.
It's possible, depending on how strong the UVA content is, that the total effect could lower 25(OH)D levels, but that would mainly apply to someone who worked by an office window/shopfront most of the day so they spent a considerable amount of time in sunlight but behind glass so they only got UVA and no UVB. We are all aware of the danger of sunbeds and it's the UVA that sunbed produce that causes the damage that starts cancers. The same thing can happen if you get long exposure to UVA with no UVB to provide the vitamin D that controls the cancer. We didn't evolve to ever deal with UVA only, now people put sunblock on their skin so they never make vitamin d from UVB and the sunscreen is itself turning UVB into UVA therefore compounding the potential for cancer.

Skin Cancer/Sunscreen - the Dilemma This video explains in more detail.

Ideally you want to be between 210~220 for longest life expectancy. It's getting too low that is worrying. You can have higher levels and still have a good balance of HDL

Inflammatory status. Your body uses vitamin D to deal with chronic inflammation, If you have diabetes or are developing it your body is dealing with inflammation ALL the time, it's upregulating your immune system, it's a bit like keeping the fire brigade manned and working 24/7 it costs money and has to be paid for, someone had to pay for keeping the fire services working all that time. In your body your immune system is probably 4th in the energy demand levels, after keeping body temperature stable, then keeping organs supplied then muscle function operating comes fueling the immune system, if all is quite and it's just ticking over on standby that's not to bad but if ALL THE TIME it's dealing with chronic inflammation (grains, omega 6 oils, stress, lack of sleep, excessive exercise etc) then it's would burn out if it wasn't keeping these chronic inflammatory forces damped down. Running the immune system on high all the time costs vitamin d, magnesium and omega 3 so you will be deficient. No one can guess what your inflammatory status is at any one time because we can't know what stress/diet/workload you are under, nor do can we guess how good a responder you are to supplements or sun.
If I tell somone to take 5000iu daily that is a safe guess because the response if low leaves them around 30ng/ml and a good responder would get perhaps 90ng/ml But only a 25(OH)D test can be sure and as it's safer to be above 30ng/ml than below it's better to tell people to aim high. If when they get tested they find they are higher than they need be then it's a simple matter to reduce the daily intake and wait for the levels to drop. but anything under 200ng/ml is safe and you have to take 40,000iu/daily for many months to get anywhere near that level so there is huge margin for safety.

There is a huge number of people with very low status.
Back in 1934 they knew you could stop children having dental cavities by giving them 600,000iu vitamin D and stopping them eating grains.

see here form more

The trouble is it doesn't pay if people don't get ill or don't need to use a dentist. So we have restrictions on RDA levels with the intention of keeping disease incidence high. We know how to prevent tooth decay, but there is no money in that so we don't.

Wow awesome info!! Thanks Ted.

I actually had heard about the suncreen / cancer connection although not in this kind of detail.. truly scary.. my moms had skin cancer on her nose many times now, and she keeps putting sunscreen on her nose thinking shes protecting herself.. sad..

The info about inflammatory status = regulation of vitamin D.. thats interesting and could explain part of my vitamin D deficiency.. as ive been under a lot of mental and physical stress for years on end from anxiety/ocd and over-exercising/competing in martial arts tournaments.

Im not taking any supplemental vitamin D anymore.. but im making an effort to get some real sunlight everyday, reducing stress, exercising a bit less and more intelligently, trying to heal my digestive issues etc.. I suppose I should check my levels again soon.

Another question... I had my vitamin d checked a long time ago now and it was just below "normal" range, which is obv. way too low.

However, I recently had some other tests done and my calcium level was at the top of normal range.

Is it possible to have top range calcium level and low vitamin D? Doesnt vit D deficiency cause low calcium?

I just read an article linking low vit. D with pelvic floor problems in women.. and ive had pelvic floor/prostate issues all year, and this started right after my doc told me my vitamin D was low! maybe theres a link!!

Indeed we must never consider NORMAL = NATURAL
Humans evolved in the tropics wearing very little if any clothing. Of those who migrated north the paler skinned (able to make/store more vitamin d) were more fertile, had larger pelvis, survived birth and infection better. So the ability to store vitamin D in tissue and supply vitamin d replete breast milk to babies would have been significant advantages and that only happens ABOVE 40ng/ml and optimally 60ng/ml.
A NORMAL25(OH)D level for a western person wearing normal clothing working in a town setting (polluted sky) behind glass much of the day with very little face/hand UVB exposure will vary (in the UK) from 14~28ng/ml winter to summer
A NATURAL 25(OH)D for a person living near naked outdoors in a sunny country would be 60~100ng/ml.

While it is true higher vitamin D status permits a higher amount of calcium absorption it's also true there are huge differences in the amounts of calcium and vitamin d available for absorption from the diet.
A higher vitamin d level ENABLES greater calcium uptake if calcium is available it does not CONTROL whether calcium is absorbed or not.
For a better, more detailed explanation watch this Heaney video
Whats a Vitamin D Deficiency?

Yes
Generally speaking people with low vitamin D will also have a low calcium uptake but there is a huge variation in availability/absorption of both substances (and other minerals/nutrients that work alongside both these, it's wrong to think these are the only players on the scene). As calcium behaving badly is considerably more dangerous than vitamin D (think stoke) I'd suggest magnesium and Vitamin K sources were checked and supplements for both are readily available and probably needed. Calcification of arteries is best avoided and calcium trafficking (you body having to rob your bones to ensure calcium is available to the brain where it's used by astrocytes to communicate) is best avoided. So you need magnesium to COUNTERBALANCE the actions of calcium and work as a natural calcium channel blocker and Vitamin K to lock calcium in your bones where is should stay.
You need to understand that calcium is used to tense each muscle fibre and magnesium relaxes that fibre similarly in the brain calcium excites neurones and magnesium calms them so you need BOTH in proportion and too much calcium is generally a problem. People supplementing with vitamin d should be aware it may allow four times the current amount of calcium to be absorbed so if you haven't sufficient magnesium reserves (and most people don't consume the daily RDA for magnesium) this may reveal magnesium deficiency.

Low vitamin d status can cause problems EVERYWHERE in the body. I don't know any part of the body where Vitamin D Receptors are not expressed and that means there is a Vitamin D Requirement.

My daughter (7years old) has just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes - 2 days ago. I have come across several articles suggesting a theory that Vitamin D deficiency could cause type 1 diabetes. Can anyone point me to research in this area? Also if I have her tested for Vit d deficiency and she is low how will supplements affect blood sugar levels? Finally is there any evidence that taking Vitamin D would maintain what is left of the islet insulin producing cells once the main bulk of these cells have started to die off, or even to reverse the decline? Difficult questions to answer I know.

Start by watching this video and it will give me time to put up some other links.
Vitamin D and Diabetes-Can We Prevent it?

First I think that Type 1 Diabetes is preventable but only if we ensure mothers have vitamin D deficiency (by which I mean less than the human body would naturally maintain if we lived near naked outdoors and at which level human breast milk is vitamin D replete.) throughout pregnancy and throughout the next 2 years of breastfeeding. Correcting vitamin D status throughout pregnancy is going to be hard enough (impossible with the new RDA vit d recommendations) and suggesting 2yrs breastfeeding isn't going to make me popular either.

We also shouldn't encourage babies to eat flour/grain based products either.
Diet, Gut, and Type 1 Diabetes: Role of Wheat-Derived Peptides?

Tight junctions, intestinal permeability, and autoimmunity: celiac disease and type 1 diabetes paradigms.


If you want to understand how an autoimmune condition can develop this Cordain Lecture explains the route in a lecture about MS but a similar scenario will be implicated for Type I diabetes.

Correcting vitamin D status acts on the tight junctions. It also improves inflammatory status in the gut and reduces the pathogenic gut flora that promote inflammation as does omega 3.

Ok good to know.. ive actually been taking some magnesium every day the past week..

I just sorta freaked myself out last night (health anxiety) cause I looked up high normal calcium and low vitamin d and it seemed to suggest a parathyroid problem.. but im young, and generally feel pretty good, and havent noticed any off lumps or anything in my neck..

just thought it was odd that, vitamin D allows your body to absorb calcium, and low vitamin d should cause low calcium? yet my vitamin d was below the normal ref. range and my calcium was the absolute top of the ref. range. kinda odd.. so if i started taking a bunch of vit d3, wouldnt that spike my calcium even higher which would be very bad from what ive read.

I tend to freak myself out paying too much attention to lab results, i think the best bet is to just eat right, sleep right, live right and things tend to fall into balance.

I think there is a problem with the amount of iodine people are now getting.
It depends a lot on where you live and what you eat.
It's worth reading what Dr Davis has to say about thyroid health