As always, if the font is too small, you can use “control +” to increase its size.
In the last several weeks, two momentous occasions have occurred in the world of vitamin D.
First, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its new report. It tripled the recommended intakes, doubled the upper limit, and commissioned researchers to go forth and test the effects of intakes higher than the upper limit, as this would be safe under proper supervision and provide valuable information.
This sucker is 999 pages long. When I finish reading it, you can look forward to one heck of a blog post on the matter. Stay tuned, folks.
The second momentous occasion occurred two days ago (Tuesday, December 14, 2010) when bestselling business author and tango champion Tim Ferriss released The 4-Hour Body. Tim’s last book, The 4-Hour Workweek, was number one on the New York Times, Business Week, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and has been translated thus far into 35 languages.
In his new book, he dicusses my research on the interactions between vitamins A, D, and K, and gives the following warning:
Supplemental vitamin D increases your need for vitamin A, so don’t forget the aforementioned cod liver, which includes both.
Hooray! It’s wonderful to see someone with this type of reach get this information out there.
I first raised the issue of vitamin A-and-D interactions in the spring of 2006 in my article on vitamin A and osteoporosis. I developed these thoughts further and introduced their interactions with vitamin K in the fall of 2006 in my article, From Seafood to Sunshine: A New Understanding of Vitamin D Safety, and in the spring of 2007 in my article, On the Trail of the Elusive X Factor: A 62-Year Mystery Finally Solved, Vitamin K2 Revealed.
I formally published my hypothesis that vitamin D toxicity results not so much from hypercalcemia but moreso from causing the excessive production of vitamin K-dependent proteins, leading to defective forms of these proteins in the absence of adequate vitamin K, in my December, 2007 Medical Hypotheses paper, Vitamin D Toxicity Redefined: Vitamin K and the Molecular Mechanism. Tufts University researchers confirmed the first prediction of this hypothesis the following year, showing that when vitamin A protects against vitamin D toxicity, it curbs the excessive production of vitamin K-dependent proteins.
When I wrote these articles, all the most compelling research I had was from animal studies. I wish that when I wrote them I had known that proof of principle for vitamin A-and-D interactions had already been experimentally demonstrated in humans. This revelation, however, had to wait for my 2009 Wise Traditions lecture, Cod Liver Oil: Our Number One Superfood. (You can get the DVD here).
In 1941, Irwin G. Spiesman published a human trial in the Archives of Otolaryngology, a journal published by the American Medical Association, Massive Doses of Vitamins A and D in the Prevention of the Common Cold.
Spiesman treated 54 individuals who suffered from frequent colds (five to seven colds per winter) with massive doses of either vitamin A alone, vitamin D alone, or vitamins A and D together. He treated them during the winter, for as many as three years, with a dosing schedule reaching a maximum of 40,000 IU for vitamin A and 300,000 IU for vitamin D.
Spiesman found that vitamins A and D only reduced colds when fed together:
Likewise, he found that vitamins A and D were only safe when provided together:
This study is not perfect. As you can see from the numbers on top of the bars in the second graph, there were far fewer people in the groups receiving either vitamin alone than in the group receiving both vitamins together. Spiesman reported that this was because it was difficult to get people receiving no benefit to continue the study for very long. It makes the study more difficult to interpret. On the other hand, given the toxicity figures in the second graph, we can be happy for safety’s sake that so few people were given massive doses of one or the other vitamin alone.
It would also have been better to have had a vitamin-free control group. And it would have been better to see the effects of more realistic doses of vitamins.
Nevertheless, the study quite clearly provides proof of principle in humans that vitamins A and D are most beneficial and safest when provided together, just like in the animal experiments.
Several commenters on this blog and on my Facebook Fan Page have provided testimonials about their negative experiences with vitamin D supplementation that support the protective effects of vitamins A and K:
Cynthia Frederick, March 2010 I, and many others I’ve met on forums, have adverse reactions to Vit D3, even the lower amounts of 2,000 IU/day and even though we were tested and were deficient. And we do not have the conditions that would make Vit D contraindicated. . . . I’m waiting for the long-term effects to take place in people taking these higher amounts who are not simultaneously increasing their Vit A and K levels. In 10 years I wager we will be hearing about the negative effects that the higher doses of this ‘miracle nutrient’ have had on those taking it. . . [in a later comment] As I mentioned before, there seems to be a subset of us for whom even low doses (1,000 IU/day) of Vit D cause kidney stones, chest pain, fatigue, and aches and pains, even though our 25 OH D levels were ‘low’ (23). We get these symptoms as soon as a week after using the D. . . . I saved myself a trip to the ER with the above symptoms by remembering previous articles of yours about balancing the fat-soluble vitamins, and took about 100,000 IU of Vit A from fish oil and 5 mg of K2. Within 1/2 hour ALL the symptoms disappeared. This happened more than once so I know it is not coincidence. You are definitely on to something here.
Lynn Razaitis, June 2010 I certainly know what happens when you get these ratios off. I naively had a vitamin D shot of 200,000 units after a serious viral infection that used up my vit A. I wrecked my kidneys, thyroid and who knows what else. It took 6 months and Chris’s articles to figure out what the heck was going on with me. Within weeks of getting my vit A up with cod liver oil and a ton of liver (and I was thyroid blood testing monthly so I had test results to compare) my thyroid hormones all normalized. It was fairly stunning.
Andrea Schüler, June 2010 I stopped taking D3 because I developed tendonitis, bursitis, tendon calcification and aches and pains. I brought my level from 20 to 50 in the 25 OH test but maybe the 2000 – 4000 IU daily was not good for me or I have not enough A and K. I will test again to see where my levels are after several months without D3 pills. Maybe I should check Vit. A and K levels too.
I have received a number of other testimonials by email from people who have developed problems such as kidney stones and bladder stones after supplementing with “safe” amounts of vitamin D — within the IOM’s new upper limit — and these symptoms quite readily develop in animals fed vitamin D with no vitamin A under experimental conditions. I have not shared these because they were sent to me in private. If you have such a testimonial and are willing to share it publicly, please post it in the comments section.
If you are a blogger or a practitioner and have commenters or patients willing to share these stories, please help me compile them into a single source by posting them here or contacting me privately.
So how much do we need of each of these vitamins and in what ratio? I do not know. We do not even know what the ideal vitamin D level is, and all of the vitamin D studies are confounded by their failure to account for the status of vitamins A and K.
Dr. Robert Heaney apparently knows what the ideal vitamin D level is:
Finally, I believe that the presumption of adequacy should rest with vitamin D intakes needed to achieve the serum 25(OH)D values (i.e., 40–60 ng/mL) that prevailed during the evolution of human physiology. Correspondingly, the burden of proof should fall on those maintaining that there is no preventable disease or dysfunction at lower levels. The IOM has not met that standard.
If I had access to Dr. Heaney’s time machine, I would love to replicate this study. All my requests for NIH funding for a time machine have been denied without any reviewer comments on how to improve my proposal. If we cannot measure paleolithic man’s 25(OH)D, perhaps we can study the fossils that his clothing has left behind, or study the residue that the melanin in his skin has left on his bones, or inspect these bones for the fossilized remains of light-absorbing coconut polyphenols from the coconut oil he may have rubbed into his skin.
But alas, I know of no studies that have quantified the decay rate of melanin or coconut polyphenols over a timescale of thousands of years, or determined the effects that sun spots, lunar cycles, planetary arrangements, and innumerable possible climate changes might have on these decay rates.
Dr. Michael Holick has a more conservative opinion. He believes that 25(OH)D should be at least 30 ng/mL. I believe there is more scientific backing for this level, which I’ve expressed in my post, “Are Some People Pushing Their Vitamin D Levels Too High?”
But that doesn’t mean we have scientific evidence that higher levels aren’t better, or that they wouldn’t be if people were getting enough vitamins A and K. I don’t see any reason to believe that this is the case, since vitamin A seems to increase the turnover and utilization of vitamin D, which should produce a “low” level despite “high” status, but this is currently in the stage of hypothesis and guesswork.
Stephan Guyenet recently commented that it would be nice to know what the vitamin D levels of Kitavans and members of other traditional, healthy groups are:
I don’t know what their 25(OH)D3 status is, but I wish I did. I’d love to know what their 1,25(OH)D3 levels look like too. I agree that it’s important to have a baseline for comparison so that we can decide what’s biologically normal. I’ve been looking for data to answer that question but I haven’t found it yet.
Knowing this would help, but there is still the question of the optimal A-to-D ratio, and how this might further be affected by vitamin K status.
A paper that Dr. Holick recently co-authored suggested that ratios between four and eight may be ideal. The lead author, Dr. Linda Linday, had used cod liver oil with a ratio within this range to successfully protect against upper respiratory tract infections. These authors also cited research showing this range of ratios to be ideal in chickens. They also cited Sally Fallon’s summary of my A-and-D interaction work as evidence that there was growing concern among the public about the proper ratio of A and D.
Their findings about cod liver oil are somewhat convincing, but they can’t account for the vitamin D the subjects were getting from the sun, and they didn’t test different ratios. The chicken research is more rigorous, but it’s, well, it’s in chickens.
From an evolutionary perspective, the usefulness of data from chickens depends on whether you believe the evolutionary trees (or bushes, if you prefer) derived from morphology, which place birds as closer to crocodiles than to mammals by 65 million years, or the evolutionary tree/bushes derived from molecular biology, which place birds with mammals and not with crocodiles. (See this review.) Or perhaps we should consider binding proteins and enzymatic pathways directly related to vitamin D metabolism. With respect to D2 versus D3, for example, primates are much more similar to birds than to rats. (See this review).
Ah, the mired network of divergent and convergent evolution. Perhaps we should follow Setphan’s ingenius idea of studying humans. Living ones.
Paul Jaminet of Perfect Health Diet (here, down a few comments) suggests the ideal amounts are 10,000 IU A and 4,000 IU D. This also sounds quite plausible to me, but again, we can’t say it’s more than a semi-educated guess.
This brings us back to Tim Ferris. Ferriss tripled his testosterone by bringing his 25(OH)D up to 50 ng/mL and by following a number of other parts of his testosterone-boosting protocol including getting vitamin A from cod liver oil and eating plenty of vitamin K-rich foods. Ferriss didn’t conduct a dose-finding study on himself, and there’s just about zero reason to believe that the ideal level in Ferriss is going to be the ideal level in anyone else, except that we know that Ferriss is human and will therefore fall within the distribution of human requirements instead of outside of it.
But “follow me and do what I do” is not the point of his book. The point of his book is to advocate self-experimentation and to provide a starting point for each individual from among his massive audience based on his own self-experimentation.
We should still do the science, but it’s going to take a long time, folks. The best thing to do now is to eat a well rounded whole foods diet and experiment with the levels of cod liver oil and/or vitamin D supplementation that make you feel the best, resolve your symptoms, increse your performance, and normalize your clinical tests if they’re out of whack or don’t throw them out of whack if they’re normal.
And share your results with the rest of us!
Read more about the author, Chris Masterjohn, PhD, here.
🖨️ Print post
Chris, what do you think of Dr. Cannell’s argument that Vitamin D3 is more comparable to beta carotene than to pre-formed Vitamin A since Vitamin D and beta carotene are precursors that the body transforms into the active forms (calcitriol and Vitamin A) as needed. He seems to believe that for healthy people at least it’s quite safe to consume large quantities of the precursors but playing Russian Roulette to take large quantities of the active forms and thereby bypass the body’s normal mechanisms for tightly regulating the levels of the powerful active forms. Accordingly, he advocates eating large amounts of colored vegetables containing beta carotene and either sunlight or D3 supplements as needed to provide sufficient Vitamin D stores. But as you know he strongly discourages supplementing with pre-formed Vitamin A, from either supplements or cod liver oil, or, of course, with calcitriol unless you need it due to kidney disease. Do you think his arguments make any sense?
Every time a “miracle” nutrient comes along people take it and run with it upping its consumption to levels uncharted and unknown. It is a very disconcerting practice and, for some people, downright dangerous.
[i]Ah, the mired network of divergent and convergent evolution. Perhaps we should follow Stephan’s ingenius idea of studying humans. Living ones.[/i]
Why? What possibly could we learn this way? 😉
I read with MUCH interest your blog post on the need for Vitamin A and K, and especially that you are having success with eliminating many of the side effects of vitamin d that I too have found to be present in a certain percentage of people.
I’ve been studying Vitamin D intensively for approximately 3 years, use it in clinical practice with real people on a daily basis and have answered well over a 1000 questions from people about their vitamin d experiences on my website.
Interestingly, I’ve been able to prevent and/or reverse the exact same symptoms that you are finding by always dosing with magnesium at the same time as giving the vitamin d.
If someone has these reactions, I’ll have them stop the vitamin d and do an intensive magnesium replenishment program for about a week before they start taking it again and, voila, no more issues with chest pain, anxiety, insomnia, jitteryness, kidney stones, etc.
I have found that these symptoms are rampant in the general population and are symptoms of magnesium deficiency in and of themselves. There is also quite a bit of evidence that Vitamin D depletes magnesium, and so I find these symptoms are an ‘induced’ magnesium deficiency in those who are already ‘borderline’ magnesium deficient.
When queried after the fact, I find that almost all of these people with these severe reactions had many of the symptoms of magnesium deficiency before they began taking vitamin d, but that these symptoms went unrecognized and undiagnosed- in part because magnesium blood testing is worthless.
I’d be interested in finding out about the relationship between Vitamin A, K and magnesium. I always try to tell people that vitamins are not drugs and don’t work alone in a vacuum. They work together as cofactors in relationships that science may not understand yet. This seems like a perfect example of those relationships.
Kerri Knox, RN
http://www.easy-immune-health.com
Kerri, where is the evidence that vitamin D depletes magnesium?
See Mildred Seelig’s book “Magnesium Deficiency in the Pathogenesis of Disease” for a detailed look at excess vitamin D and its relation to magnesium deficiency. The whole book is online at mgwater.com
See the published research of Dr. Fred Kummerow, who finds that Vitamin D causes calcification of the arteries, and that magnesium helps stop that.
Hi Chris –
Interestingly enough, after I starting taking an Rx dose of D2 of 50,000 IU’s daily for 3 months, I started to develop severe knee pain and a “hardness” in my knee tendons that became and still is excruciating.
My D levels were as high as 140 for a short time. I also started to develop right thumb pain and a doctor said I had developed spurs.
I do have severe arthritis in my knees so it could be coincidental. I eat a lot of fish and take a quality multi-vitmain that does not have vitamin A or K though I do add these into my diet usually.
I wonder if my A and K intake was too low for the time I spent taking the high dose D?
Also, is it cod liver oil or any fish oil that will up the A in the diet?
Thanks,
Fred
I think another possible example of this interaction effect is that of the traditional Greeland Inuit, whose diet was rich in A and D. Among other things, the rate of heart disease among them was remarkably low:
bit.ly/7bLKuk
@Kerri,
I have always taken magnesium daily for many years, mag glycinate specifically. 200-400mg/day. And I know others who have problems with Vit D take it regularly also. All I know is the symptoms always resolve after taking good doses of A, E, and K.
Hi Bill,
That argument makes sense in that it is safer to take vitamin D3 than to take calcitriol, the hormone form, but the analogy to beta-carotene does not make sense. Vitamin A and vitamin D are both converted to their active, hormone forms in a two-step enzymatic process that looks like this:
(A) retinol–>retinal–>retinoic acid
(D) cholecalciferol–>calcidiol–>calcitriol
So I think that vitamin D3 is clearly analogous to retinol. In any case, beta-carotene has been very clearly shown to be very toxic at excessive doses, so I don’t think the analogy, whether right or wrong, is particularly important.
Michael, true on both points. Let’s just look at fossilized chicken poop all day and say “wow, man, this like, looks cool and stuff.”
Hi Kerri, that’s very interesting. It’s of course difficult to interpret because magnesium is basically needed for EVERYTHING in the body, so it’s impossible to make these observations and formulate a very specific hypothesis. But it definitely deserves some intensive research!
Fred, it’s possible that you were low in A and K. On the other hand, I would recommend avoiding the doses you were taking like the plague, and I’m not sure why anyone would believe such doses to be safe. Perhaps if you were also megadosing A and K, but 50,000 IU/day? I’d consider that a highly experimental treat-at-your-own-risk disaster-prone type of treatment. Cod liver oil and liver are the best sources of vitamin A. Liver is even better if your D levels are still toxic.
Chris
Ned, thanks!
Cynthia, while your experience is awful and deeply lamentable, I’m very glad you have so much information to share about it. That you were supplementing magnesium provides very important information in light of what Kerri has observed.
Chris
Hmm, was it D2 or D3 Spiesman used (I can’t look at the paper)? If D3, it was a disproportionally high dose, yet with a lower rate of toxicity (as you mentioned though, too few people).
I take 3000IU/day of D3. The other week I ate chicken liver every day for lunch and felt great, lots of sleep and energy. It made me think of this: http://www.spectracell.com/media/129fullpaper2008jmivitamin-a-and-sleep-regulation.pdf
I tried a K2 supplement (K2 Complex from Life Extension) about a month ago and got a cold after about a week.
Our experience has also been that vitamin k (mk4 and mk7, and i imagine k1 as well) depletes vitamin d stores. It can do it very quickly, over a matter of days. I was vitamin d toxic, when i noticed vitamin k helped with kidney discomfort i took at least 300 mcg mk7, and 12000 mcg mk4 daily in divided doses. Then suddenly one day in less than a week i was having a severe, as i view it, vitamin d deficiency symptoms – i had chicken soup which is a source of vitamin a, and my blood calcium levels went way down, making me feel exhausted. During that period i had almost non existent sun exposure.
…. also during that time i experimented with vitamin A during my intoxication with vitamin d, taking 10k my normal dose, and not taking any but beta carrotene. My observation has been that vitamin A is more helpful or quicker for bone remodelling, and vitamin k works better with vitamin A, than without it. However too much vitamin A exceeding vitamin d or body demands (via my vision accuity test) seems damaging, i have a cavity and it hurts the roots of it when taking excess vitamin A, food and cod liver oil sources.
Regarding magnesium, it is my observation that excess magnesium that is quickly absorved also is not good at all, first of all it activates too much of the vitamin d – which seems to cause bone loss, second it temporarily stops bone remodelling process – information found from research on patients with kidney dialisis, and as far as i can tell my kidneys are normal, especially now that i am not vitamin d intoxicated. Best is enough magnesium to activate enough vitamin d, and the slow release kind form foods.
[quote]We should still do the science, but it’s going to take a long time, folks. The best thing to do now is to eat a well rounded whole foods diet and experiment with the levels of cod liver oil and/or vitamin D supplementation that make you feel the best, resolve your symptoms, increse your performance, and normalize your clinical tests if they’re out of whack or don’t throw them out of whack if they’re normal.
[/quote]
Sounds like you are advocating that we rebuild our shared, cultural wisdom with trial and error and not wait around for science to resolve all of our issues. I like it!
My numbers:
22 ng/ml after extended daily consumption of recommended daily dose of green pastures fermented CLO
46 ng/ml after adding 5000 IU D3 to the CLO listed above
38 ng/ml after dropping the 5000 IU D3 during the summer but continuing the CLO
Chris,
Have you learned more through your studies on fat-soluble vitamins on how retinoic acid side effects might play into this? It seems on the face of it that D might be able to resolve issues with retinoic acid, but in my experience, large dosages of vitamin D are counterproductive and vitamin A, by itself or combined with D, seems to resolve some issues while exacerbating others.
Thank you for your excellent piece,
Rob
Hi Chris,
Very nice summary of the situation! We really do need more data, and can only make educated guesses at this point.
One brief comment: people have asked me about the Linday-Hollick paper that suggests an A to D ratio of 4-8 to 1, while I recommend more like 2.5 to 1 as you note. The Linday-Hollick ratio was from diet/supplements alone, and didn’t include D obtained from sunlight. My lower ratio includes all sources of D. So these numbers are more consistent than they may appear.
Best, Paul
just a note that green pastures fermented cod liver oil / high vitamin butter oil blend is a 5 to 1 ratio. Recommended dose of half teaspoon provides 3000A and 600D.
Great article, Chris. Can you elaborate any on your comment about high amounts of beta carotene being toxic? I regularly eat around a pound of sweet potatoes daily, plus a lot of carrots and winter squash in the fall and winter. Could this lead to beta carotene toxicity, and what are its symptoms?
Thanks!
Chris,
For the fermented cod liver oil that WAPF recommends, what do you make of the majority of vitamin D being D2? (http://www.greenpasture.org/retail/?t=products&a=test-data)
My understanding is that it’s D3 that we should be supplementing with?
Also, I’ve read that D3 is found in animal sources whereas D2 comes from plants? So where does such a high level of vitamin D come from in the cod liver oil?
I try to eat natural / whole food sources of vitamins rather than supplements, which is why I like the idea of cod liver oil – I was just surprised about the D2 and am trying to get a better understanding.
Thanks.
John, it just says “calciferol” from Mead and Johnson Company. You could probably dig up what they were selling as “calciferol” back then, but the name could mean either D2 or D3. I oppose the LEF supplement because of its 1 mg of K1, and everyone who has asked me I have told them to stay away from it or use one capsule/day max.
Tim, cool, thanks for the info!
Rob, accutane induces vitamin A deficiency. See the DVD of my 2008 Wise Traditions lecture, “The Fat-Soluble Vitamins and Mental Health” (http://www.fleetwoodonsite.com/product_info.php?products_id=5283) or my article version of that lecture, “The Pursuit of Happiness.” http://www.westonaprice.org/mentalemotional-health/1571
Paul, thanks! Good point. I made that point in this post, too, although I think the ratios actually come from the chicken studies, which probably took light into account much more effectively.
Jack, thanks for the info.
Mike, 30 mg/day beta-carotene supplements were shown to kill people in huge randomized controlled trials and the trials were therefore terminated early. Many people say this is because it was isolated beta-carotene or because the population was exposed to smoke or asbestos, but Wang’s group at Tufts showed, using a ferret model, which is very similar to humans with respect to responses to beta-carotene and cigarette smoke, that 30 mg/d beta-carotene alone is more harmful than 1 pack/d cigarette smoke. However, 6 mg beta-carotene seemed helpful, and it’s possible that coadministration of vitamins C and E would have made the 30 mg/d safe. Some of the toxicity in the Spiesman paper above was actually due to beta-carotene. In any case, you cannot get 30 mg/d from food, so I would not worry about consuming beta-carotene from food.
The Primalist, I don’t know the answer and I think there are many unresolved questions about the vitamin D’s in marine oils. Obviously it’s false that D2 comes from plants and D3 from animals, as fish are animals (though this may be accumulated from plankton or other non-animal sources). I think it’s important to realize that we don’t know the biochemistry as much as the hysteria-driven vitamin D movement maintains that we do, and therefore we should look at clinical effects of foods, and not try to extrapolate from specific chemical forms in foods or rely too heavily on 25(OH)D levels in and of themselves.
Chris
Thanks for mentioning and posting the link to your article, “The Pursuit of Happiness.” I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before; I had been bouncing back and forth on that very topic. My mention in the previous comment about feeling good when I ate liver every day seems to make sense.
Hot off the presses:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21154195
Hi Chris,
2 questions:
1. To test for vitamin A levels, is there anything special we need to ask for, or is the standard test sufficient?
2. What is an optimal vitamin A level to shoot for? Or is that in question too?
3 years ago my test results for vitamin A were: 1.8 umol/L
(the lab’s reference range: 1.2 – 2.8 umol/L)
If vitamin D increases your need for vitamin A, the reversed scenario must also e true, or what?
Vitamin A increases your need for vitamin D?
This would somehow explain my reaction to vitamin A. Whenever I have tried to supplement with vitamin A, I get extremely dry eyes and dry skin that gets thin and breaks easily. When I stop it goes away. On my lab test it shows I am relatively low in vitamin D.
Would this mean I would benefit from ONLY supplementing on D3 and possibly K?
I was reading an excerpt from Nourishing Traditions the other day by Weston Price where he said that children should not be given cod liver oil for an extended period of time, as it can cause toxicity. My four-year-old has been taking it since he was about a year old. He also takes the butter oil. Is this true? I thought it was good to give him cod liver oil.
Chris,
I had recently tracked my dietary intake for 3 days and my average A intake was 19167 IU (RAE of 2336.57, if it matters. I take a 5000 IU vitamin D at least 6 days out of 7…can you see any need for me to take additional A?
Best,
Skyler
[b]if vitamin d is produced in the presence of uv light is it safe to go to tanning salons?i would preffer to that beacause i’d get the tanning bennefits[/b]
I was about to take 10,000 IU of vitamin A and 4,000 IU of vitamin D until I read this newsletter:
[url]http:/www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-vitamin-a-and-cancer.shtml[/url]
It is referenced with studies of people taking high amounts of both vitamin A(retinol) and vitamin D. Anyways, after reading the newsletter and checking the studies I decided that I will only take around 3,300 IU of Vitamin A from animal products. Am I being too fearful? Where these studies cherry picked?
Thanks for all your great articles,
Jay
We shared Chris’ article with our readers (with permission from WAPF) and received this feedback from someone. Does anyone have any knowledge/expertise on this? . . .
Since you are advocating the use of cod liver oil, I thought you may want to know in case you didn’t already know that Dr. Jonathan Wright of Health e-Tips Newsletters has repeatedly written that Vitamin E as mixed tocopherols should be taken with any intake of fatty essential oils. This excerpt below is taken from Q & A with Dr. Wright section of the Health e-Tips Newsletter dated Thu, March 25, 2010 6:14:53 AM:
“Fish oil is the best way to increase your intake of omega-3 essential fatty acids. I recommend 1 tablespoon of cod liver oil and 1,500 milligrams of DHA daily. And remember, whenever you take any type of fatty acid, you need to take vitamin E as well (400 IU of vitamin E as mixed tocopherols). Vitamin E helps keep the fatty acids from breaking down too rapidly in the body.”
On http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-vitamin-a-and-cancer.shtml
it is stated:
A few weeks ago, the British Medical Journal published a remarkable paper, remarkable that it studied more than 500,000 subjects, remarkable that it had 56 (fifty-six) authors, remarkable that it confirmed low vitamin D levels obtained in the past are a risk factor for developing colon cancer in the future. However, the most remarkable part of the paper is that the 46 scientists minimized the true significance of their own research. They found that vitamin A, even in relatively low amounts, appears to thwart vitamin D’s association with reduced rates of colon cancer.
On http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/is-vitamin-d-safe-still-depends-on-vitamins-a-and-k-testimonials-and-a-human-study.html
it is stated:
Spiesman treated 54 individuals who suffered from frequent colds (five to seven colds per winter) with massive doses of either vitamin A alone, vitamin D alone, or vitamins A and D together. He treated them during the winter, for as many as three years, with a dosing schedule reaching a maximum of 40,000 IU for vitamin A and 300,000 IU for vitamin D.
Spiesman found that vitamins A and D only reduced colds when fed together:
So, it seems to me that *some* vitamin A is needed along with D3, but not too much. Any rule of thumb about how much vitamin A to take with D3 supplementation?
Alobar
Vitamin D is NOT a Vitamin, it is STEROID. It has immune supressing properties. Be careful.
Chris,
I just wondered why you were so opposed to the 1mg of k1 is the LEF supplement.
Geof
Interesting information about the close relationship between vitamins A, D, and K! Perhaps the best self-experiment is to eat a well-rounded diet, full of wholesome foods. Let’s also not forget regular sun exposure! After all, the best vitamin D is the one that’s created by the skin.
i am currently under the tim ferris protocol about vit d3 and butter oil and cod liver oil and it is great, rela boost in immune system i would say as well as testoterone levels
There is something very critical missing on this site about vitamin D. Not only are vitamin K2 and vitamin A important, but magnesium is essential for the proper utilization of vitamin D. Without proper consideration to magnesium, calcium from the bones can leach into the blood. Also excess vitamin D consumption can cause magnesium depletion. Dr.Carolyn Dean M.D. is an expert on magnesium and explains its role on vitamin D utilization.
Sam
I just started to read about the ratio needed between A and D as of today, so although I have already read several articles on the subject, I’m not to the level of knowledge most everyone else appears to be on this page. I live in the west (long winters) and I take about 2000-2500 IU of Vitamin D daily (not during the summer months). I have never really given Vitamin A a second thought, although I now realize that my daily vitamin contains 5000 IU of Vitamin A.
I find it interesting that all of the recommendations include higher supplementation of Vitamin A vs Vitamin D, when the personal stories/experiments I read in the comments suggest the opposite. It appears that those taking higher doses of Vitamin A over Vitamin D were suffering deficiency symptoms, but when more Vitamin D was added, symptoms improved or disappeared altogether in most cases. Why are the “recommendations” so high in Vitamin A?
probably because CLO has more Vitamin A than D. But, WE ARE NOT FISH. I take much higher amounts of D over A. It makes sense since we are on land. 15 minutes can help one make 20k IU of Vit D. We are meant to be in the sun, a lot more. Office life is unnatural. Being indoors is unnatural.
I’m wondering if anyone can shed some light on this: In the past, every time I try to take even the tiniest amount of vitamin K2, I get extreme body aches. I am a great risk of osteoporosis due to lifelong undiagnosed celiac disease with resultant malabsorption/malnutrition. I now take 50,000 IU of vitamin D M-F and 10,000 IU of vitamin A M-F. I also take magnesium at the same time. I’m about to give the K2 a try again, but with some trepidation. Is there a relationship/ratio between these three vitamins that might explain the pain I’ve had when trying to take K2? Not sure if it’s relevant, but I also eat a very clean diet – grass fed meats, organic fruits and veggies only, no dairy -since it’s the only way I can deal with the severe celiac and casein intolerance. Thank you!
Dale, if you are achy on taking vitamin K2, have a look at the form. The human body uses the MK4 form of vitamin K2 while the Vitamin K2 commonly sold is the MK7 form made by bacteria. Of course it makes sense that the MK4 form is more functional and friendly to the body than the MK7 form intended for use by bacteria. In a few people, taking even low doses of MK7 can lead to the symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness, a thumping heart beat and increased blood pressure. These side effects of MK7 could be the cause of your muscle soreness. Have a look at your vitamin K2 bottle and get an MK4 only form to try next time. Good MK4 levels are important to scavenging calcium from the arteries and its important for cardiac health.
How much vitamin k2 mk4 do you recommend in proportion to vitamins A and D?
I have several of the late health food pioneer Dr. Bernard Jensen’s old books. He says don’t take vitamin D. Instead take cod liver oil. I was low on vitamin D and took a supplement and felt awful. Nausea and constipation achy feeling too, so quit taking it and now take Norwegian cod liver oil. I capsule in afternoon and a morning vitamin formula for hair skin and nails. I am 66. Jensen also warns about vitamin D causing kidney and gallbladder stones. I am still low on Vitamin D so all that former supplementing of vitamin D didn’t help me. My bowels have improved not taking it. Everything else on my blood test is normal.
I take 6oooiu of vitamin d3 and 10000iu vitamin a in the morning is this okay? I have severe osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. I am taking eggshell calcium, shark cartilage and a salmon oil supplement, is there anything else I should be taking to improve my bone density. Thank you.
I was taking vitamin D3 for half a year. 25000 IU every two weeks. Then I added Vit. K2 _ 200 mcg.
In this supplement was also vit. D3 about 1000 IU. I added codliver oil to this, in which was maybe also 1000 IU. So without knowing this could be dangerous, I was taking about 4000 IU per day.
Before taking the K2/D3 supplement and the codliver oil, I already had terrible back pains and pains in my arms. When I added the K2/D3 and codliver oil, I started to get UTI’s all the time. That is when I stopped the D3 completely. The UTI’s dissapeared. But I got very weak, I had the feeling of fainting for more than 1 month. Then I started to take Calcium citrate about 600 Mg per day. I felt better with it. But after 1 week I started to get terrible pain in my shoulders (bones). A few weeks later I got pain in my elbows and knees also.
Is this from the vit. D3 that leaked calcium in my tissues and then adding the Calcium after that ?
What can I do ? Take a lot of K2 and A ?
I stopped everything now : the D3 and calcium. I only take about 300 Mg Magnesium (glycinate + malate). Should I stop the Magnesium also ?
Anybody who can give me some more information about what I should do to get rid of the pain ?
Thank you.
Hi Annick, part of the problem here is that you have tried so many things that its hard to give you specific advice. At times the body is so complex that we just have to patiently try things to see how they work. The people above who had non-linear results with taking vitamin D are a good example, they were experiencing the symptoms of high vitamin D doses even when taking low amounts of vitamin D such as 1000 IU which is a really low dose.
One way to go about this is gradually. Take as much vitamin D3 as you can manage, then add a small amount of cod liver oil and see if there is an improvement in your symptoms over a reasonable period of time. Do the same with Vitamin K2 and use the MK4 form for this. The idea is to work your body out of the resource conflicts that are now hampering it and into a better balanced state of health. Many of us find good results in taking the proper sized doses of vitamins A and D3 following the advice listed above is good.
Your UTI’s are an example of an abnormal outcome. Normally increasing the Vitamin D3 level improves immune system function by allowing the body to not attack itself and attack viruses more easily. There is a possible reaction where the body finds a bacteria when the needed vitamin D is supplied and this makes the patient for a short while feel sicker than before. So such contradictory reactions are possible. It can also take months for some patients to feel fully normal on their new dose of Vitamin D3
I would suggest also taking a 6 mg boron pill, the boron is both a cofactor that helps vitamin D3 to work and in higher doses it acts strongly against many forms of arthritis.
David Sander,
Thank you for your reply. I am too scared to take any vit. D3.
For now I try to eat 1 liver per week (for extra vit. A). I make smoothies with carrots / celery and I ordered the K2. But I ordered the K2 MK7. I saw your post too late…..
I was looking into boron also, but wanted to soak my feet in Borax for that.
Wish I ordered the MK4….
I also read that vit. D or hormone D can lower immunity. And is bad for ceruloplasmin. (Morley Robbins)
Thank you.
Hi there,
I just found your blog researching Kidney Stones. Ive been working with a Functional Dr and am on an Elimination Diet which is just about the same as Westons Diet. Supplements and FCT Therapy for detox. I have been taking 2000 Liquid Vit D 3 for the past few mos. I just ended up in the hospital with a Kidney Stone the other day. Have no idea why. I drink loads of water, dont drink sodas, havent eaten any sugar, dairy, caffiene, gluten since Feb. Do you think the D3 could be a reason? Any other info would be appreciated.
Just wanted to add my experience: Followed the recommendations of Dr. Davis (TrackYourPlaque) to get my serum levels of 25(OH)D up to at least 60ng/ml (incidentally the middle of normal range by my lab) because of a severe PAD giving me a 60% walking-disability 9 years ago.
Took in average 7.800 IU/d supplemental D3 beside sunshine all these years. At the same took in average 15.000 IU vitamin A, by gradually increasing I, however, couldn’t accomplish the same as with D3, an arrive at the middle of normal for serum retinol. Always been at the lower than that. Though interestingly, once exceeding 24.000 IU vitamin A/d, my infrequent psoriasis outbreaks have completely ceased.
Almost forgot to mention, the 60% disability has already been reversed 4 years ago.
What have the serum levels of A and D3 have been with particular ratios of others willing to disclose here?
How much K2 specifically mk4 would be an appropriate amount to take in combination with vitamins A and D?
I had excess sweating, heart palpitations, fatigue and walking instability initially after a lot of struggle (4 months) got to know that my Vitamin D was 7 ng/ml. i got recommendation of 60000 IU per week for 8 weeks along with 500 mg calcium for 10 days.
Things went fine for first 3 to 4 weeks but it took a downhill I started getting muscle cramps and also started developing pain in chest, hand and hip etc wlong with anxiety. Hence I stopped my dosage by 7th week and got it tested with 28.5 ng/ml. Then my endocrinologist suggested me for only 2000 IU per day along with Vitamin C (1000 unit) and calcium (300 mg). My pain and anxiety started to getting worse. I stopped the medication after 1 month. Within one week my pain subsided except my chest area. Currently I am only taking multivitamin (which does not have K2 in it).
What are the food sources which I can take for compensating Vitamin K2. Currently I am taking cow ghee one or two tea spoon a day along with my lunch.
Please suggest.
Muscle cramps can be a sign of magnesium deficiency. Either reduce your intake of calcium or take a magnesium supplement. Magnesium citrate is a good supplemental form.