I am taking Vitamin D supplement

[markusos]

This is my first post, so, first, I want to say a big thank you to Dr. McDougall and everyone is this community, for providing a forum like this.

I was never a big meat eater (btw - I"m male, 63 years) and probably about 10 years ago I started weaning myself to less and less meat. I hadn't thought of Vegetarianism or the like at all BUT I had started blending fruit and juicing vegetables around 15 years ago, and I've been doing that nearly daily for 15 years.

Anyways, in the last few years I've started to embrace the WFPB diet and more recently I've been getting on the starch based part as well.

I feel good physically - actually very good and I'm active (practice golf for sometimes 3 or 4 hours, as much as 5 times a week - ski fairly regularly in the winters.

My question is about vitamin D though - so to get to my point. I had a bout of depression about 20 years ago and was on anti-depressants for a short time. I have felt very very strong emotionally for at least 10 years and don't think I am in danger of falling into a depression but it scared the hell out of me. When I was juicing, I started doing Vitamin D supplements and researched Dr. Holick and his ideas. So, I've been doing 5,000 IU per day, during winter months (I used to live in Edmonton/Saskatoon/ and points north like that. In summers, when I'm outside a lot in the sun, I often cut out the supplements, but, in the winter I've been fairly religiously committed to 5,000 IU/day. I don't feel it's important for my PHYSICAL health necessarily at all. BUT, I am concerned that if it is ANY way connected or was connected to my depression (the D deficiency) then I do want to take ANY chance because like I said, the depression scared me to death.

Finally, the question - Dr. Holick, as I hope many would agree is a respected researcher and in fact, was the scientist who discovered the 25 deoxy..(stuff).. and many of the processes of how vitamin D is used and regulated. He is still maintaining that even levels of Vitamin D supplements as high as 10,000 IU/day are safe and there is no danger of toxicity. Dr. McDougall is saying differently I think. So, I don't want to stop but I don't want to keep going if there really is potential liver damage or something other potential problems from toxicity.

So sorry for the LONG post.
Welcome any advice or responses.

[colonyofcells]

If I don't get sunshine, I boil 8 servings of the monterey mushrooms with vitamin d I buy from costco. It gives me 400 iu x 8 = 3200 iu. Another way is to buy mushroom powder with vitamin d (made by dole company) online which can be used for soups.
http://www.beauty.com/products/prod.asp ... AGPSPN=pla
Dole sells the mushroom powder with vitamin d to other companies for rebranding.
Another source of vitamin d is lichens which are part of the traditional diet of the indigenous groups in Canada and Iceland.

[GeoffreyLevens]

Seems to me mushroom powder is the long way around to taking what amounts to a supplement just to satisfy a philosophical quibble. I would say, take the pills AND get a blood test so you know what your body is doing with it. It is possible that you are low even with 5000 iu/day and also possible you are too high even after some months without supplement. You have no way to know without testing and testing is fairly inexpensive, easy, non-invasive. You can use a mail-in single drop of blood on blotter paper for the test.

https://vitamindcouncil.zrtlab.com/

Depending on where you are located they may require an MD to send results to...not an issue in most US states though

[Skip]

Vitamin D supplements are harmful........
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl ... tamind.htm

[colonyofcells]

Mushrooms and lichens with vitamin d probably have more micronutrients than refined substances like supplements. Mushrooms are real food with fiber, protein, etc. If you want to believe the claims of vegan preachers, cooked mushrooms also protect people from a multitude of chronic diseases and cancer.

[graciezoe]

This is one area I don't follow Dr. McDougall's teaching. I live in CT where is is cloudy, snowy, or rainy 6 month of the year, I have low Vit D levels during that time. I follow Dr's. Esselstyn and Barnard who say to supplement B-12 and Vit D.

[dynodan62]

This is one area I don't follow Dr. McDougall's teaching. I live in CT where is is cloudy, snowy, or rainy 6 month of the year, I have low Vit D levels during that time. I follow Dr's. Esselstyn and Barnard who say to supplement B-12 and Vit D.

The Holick et al. crowd has somehow managed to permanently change the medical 'standard-of-care' for Vit. D blood level & testing frequency. It has become so pervasive that my local VA clinic now automatically mails me a D-3 supplement prescription if I test lower than 30. Just like with PSA testing, even though I insist they refrain and delete those tests from my lab workup, they ignore my request and include them anyway. After all, it IS now the 'standard-of-care', and all physicians must legally 'cover their asses'. The fact that almost all evidence supporting the new higher vit D 'deficiency' # designation is strictly associative & ignores other nutritional factors, appears to be considered largely irrelevant (go figure) by the medical establishment. Many other seemingly strange & incongruous circumstances are also now commonly accepted:
The american heart association tells us to consume more olive & fish oil. Oncologists insist their underweight CA patients eat lots of meat & dairy. Drs. Ornish & Pritikin even included lean meat & lowfat dairy in their regimins. Dr. Barnard says we should avoid white potatoes. Etc., etc., etc.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all just choose the dietary science that is most fashionable or personally appealing, and then magically get positive results regardless?
'Myself', and I believe Dr. McDougall also, instead prefer a course of action based on convincing 'cause & effect' evidence. I will thus continue to concentrate on maintaining a strict WFPBNO diet, get as much sun as I can (though it seems the jury could still be out on the UV lamp/supplementation issue, especially should my vit. D level ever drop below 20), supplement with adequate daily B12, and not worry about imaginary problems, or risk unnecessary injury. Others are (naturally) free to pick another course of action.

[colonyofcells]

The mainstream recommended upper limit seems to be 4,000 iu per day of vitamin d.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Vitam ... fessional/

[Katydid]

As a fellow Michigander, I know Dr. McDougall grew up in the same area I live. But I sometimes think he has been in Hawaii and California for so long he forgets what its like not to see the sun for months at a time. So I, too, take a Vitamin D (a vegan form of D3). When my blood work came back with a vitamin D level of 14, the nurse called me at work to tell me I needed to start supplementing. I agreed. The sun just isn't reliable where I live, and even this time of year, where the sun occasionally peaks out, its 40 degrees. Not exactly shirtsleeve weather .

Kate

[colonyofcells]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYGkg9YsV1c

[markusos]

Thank you for very much for the responses in this thread.

I am sorry for not searching and finding the thread that was started - and it really has a lot of the information and the advice I was looking for.

Again, thank you all so much and I will go over to that thread and learn and perhaps post something - I believe it was started by Geoff (sorry if wrong)

Mark

[JWinchel]

I'm with you Katydid...as a Metro-Detroit McDougaller it's next to impossible to get enough sunshine in our area. And like you said, when the sun does come out it can be anywhere from 40degrees to negative -5degrees for easily 6 months of the year. Plus I work in an office 40 hours per week and although I try to get outside on my lunch hour in the summer, there's just no optimal time otherwise to get sun, and I'm not an active winter sports person so I'm not sitting out there. So I supplement.

[Crider]

Vitamin D is the one area that I disagree with Dr. McDougall on. He cites harm from taking vitamin D with a couple of studies where people were administered huge, toxic doses yearly of vitamin D and suffered more falls, as I recall. Another of the studies people were given very large monthly doses of vitamin D and also showed harm over people who weren't given ay vitamin D supplementation. Both of these studies are trash, in my opinion, because they don't model how human beings evolved. Nor do they model how modern human beings supplement with vitamin D. People who supplement vitamin D do so daily, for the most part, with a much more moderate dose than the hundreds of thousands international units of vitamin D. Human beings evolved with daily doses of vitamin D, excepting for those cloudy days, in equatorial East Africa. There are absolutely zero studies showing harm from daily supplementation of a useful amount of D. I double-dare anyone to find a study contradicting that last sentence!

This video lecture by Dr. Bruce Hollis describes a model of how vitamin D is used at a cellular level by our bodies for such things as immune function and how its half-life of only 24 hours is another reason why daily doses of vitamin d make so much sense.

Here's a video rundown by Cedric F. Garland, Dr PH FACE of many studies showing the protective effect Vitamin D has against cancers. I'm just not going to ignore this. I think lack of D is as important as eating animal products for increasing cancer risk factors.

So I keep my levels of D as high as possible by sun bathing with my shirt off at lunchtime for 15 minutes or so each day. And when the sun goes too far south for enough UV-B or if it is cloudy or too cold, I do 5 minutes in front of the UV-B lamp I got last fall. Before I had the lamp, I used vitamin D pills and would again if I didn't have the lamp. The lamp, with a 300-hour bulb life, gives me 3600 vitamin D doses. I need about 110 doses per year where I live in Northern California. That means the lamp will last about 32 years before I need to replace the bulbs. I don't think my own body will last another 32 years. $250 for the lamp means 6.9 cents per dose which is cheaper than vegan vitamin D pills. It's just the upfront cost that seems so daunting.

[colonyofcells]

I seem to remember Dr McDougall mentioning the use of uvb lamps at home and he does not seem to be against uvb lamps. Uvb lamps can also be shined on dried mushrooms as mentioned by Dr Greger in an old video.

[Crider]

Yes, McDougall is positive on UV-B lamps. He's against oral vitamin D supplementation.