I read some research recently linking low vitamin D levels to chronic pain in women. As the Scottish population is well known to be rather deficient in vitamin D (not enough sunlight, poor diet), and as I see a lot of patients with chronic pain, I’ve started sharing this research with female patients who have chronic pain. Already I’ve had back reports of quite dramatic reductions in pain levels in some of these patients. I hadn’t been aware of such a connection before but I had been aware that vitamin D insufficiency might be one of the factors behind the high levels of Multiple Sclerosis in Scotland. Well, it seems that vitamin D may have an even more extensive role to play in health than we realised
In a paper published in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Norman identifies vitamin D’s potential for contributions to good health in the adaptive and innate immune systems, the secretion and regulation of insulin by the pancreas, the heart and blood pressure regulation, muscle strength and brain activity. In addition, access to adequate amounts of vitamin D is believed to be beneficial towards reducing the risk of cancer. Norman also lists 36 organ tissues in the body whose cells respond biologically to vitamin D. The list includes bone marrow, breast, colon, intestine, kidney, lung, prostate, retina, skin, stomach and the uterus. According to Norman, deficiency of vitamin D can impact all 36 organs. Already, vitamin D deficiency is associated with muscle strength decrease, high risk for falls, and increased risk for colorectal, prostate and breast and other major cancers.
This research group is recommending that people take 2000 international units of vitamin D a day. This is considerably higher than other recommendations which range from 200 to 400 units depending on age (older people need more). It is possible to take too much vitamin D and be harmed by it but this is unlikely at doses under 10,000 units daily so the 2,000 units recommendation is well within safety limits.
This seems to be a developing story, but I think we’re going to see more attention being paid to this somewhat neglected vitamin!
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Hello again, it’s been a while!
I’m glad to hear that you’re having patient success with vitamin D.
An important thing to note is that it’s the level of 25OHD acheived than the D3 dose given that you should watch out for. There is a large variability in dose response that the only way to tailor a dose is to measure to be around 50-60ng/ml – whether this is done by 1000iu or 10,000iu is irrelevant.
The body can make 10,000iu on a day of good UVB exposure so that dose is indeed the safest max. at the mo.
Thats interesting. I can’t have a vitamin D deficiency…but its an interesting thought.
You have my mind spinning about this one Doc….