How much vitamin d are you taking?

[bingowingsmcgee]

Anyone following Dr John Campbell on YouTube may have seen his video on vit d dosing, and I'm interested to know if anyone is taking more than the general dose on the bottles? I've been taking more for a few weeks now - about 10-12 weeks, and I've noticed my periods are much less painful. Just wondering if anyone else is taking more and if you've noticed any benefits?

4000iu

I take 16,000iu per day, and have done for the last four years. I take it with K2, magnesium and zinc, and my blood levels have never gone above 180, even in summer. I check them every six months or so and it costs around £40.

I actually started out taking 50,000iu per day for the first three months (which started in May, so also had the benefit of sunlight) and it still took a year to get to 175!

I should say though, I got Covid in March, it took four months to recover, and it left me with asthma!

Re: the DMInder app, you can get blood tests done, I know you can either get them done from a private company like Thriva, or an NHS direct-to-public service from NHS Sandwell (I haven't got round to sending off for one yet). They're around £30 and they send you a kit in the post, you have to prick your finger onto the test strip and send it back. Then you can enter your results into the app, and you're off to the best start using it. Make sure you know what units you're using... nmol/l is the SI unit and used in UK & Europe; the US uses ng/ml and differs by a multiple of 2.5 (eg 20 ng/ml = 50 nmol/l).

You don't have to get a blood test though, you can enter certain parameters about your situation, such as BMI, ethnicity, age, location, how long you've been taking a supplement & how much etc etc and it calculates an estimated level for you.

The app is great (I don't work for them, just a happy user!). You enter your daily supplement into the app. You can also input your sunbathing sessions (March to September only for the UK as the sun needs to be at a higher elevation above the horizon than 32 deg to let through UVB radiation at the right wavelength).There's also a section for food, but it's a bit limited... also it makes you realise how little vit D is in food. Eg there's only about 40 iu in an egg... a decent supplement has 4000 iu. So, we either have to make all our vitamin D in the summer months by living a fully outdoor lifestyle, not really possible these days unless your job is a lifeguard on Bournemouth beach, eat an ancestral northern latitude carnivore/piscivore diet with platefuls of caribou liver, salmon steaks and whale blubber... or take a good supplement

I take 3000 iu and K2. I was advised to by my oncologist (breast cancer with ovary removal due to brca2). And I love I've in Scotland.

I take 2000, have done for around a month. I noticed immediately my tendonitis was gone. It comes back if I miss a few day’s.

About 30 microgram since the beginning of October. I am coeliac so get my levels tested annually by the NHS and in June was at 78. During the summer I try to get some time in the garden exposing as much skin as possible but now we're in autumn/winter I have increased my dose.

Can anyone recommend a good brand? Not all are made equal sadly...

I take 20,000 units a day, was diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency & this was what I was prescribed, didn't take it for ages, but since Covid started & after reading that deficiency increased the risk have taken it every day.

I take 20000 iu but only once a week. It was prescribed by my doctor here in Germany years ago as I had a very, very low vitamin D level in my blood.

I'm very fair skinned and tend to avoid the sun as I burn so easily.

I take cod liver oil tablet which has 10ug - not dire if this is enough? I’m BAME so might need more but not confident to take anything without having a blood test and checking with the gp..

2000iu

3000iu with K2. Children have a spray with 10ug.

@Tadpolesandfroglets
Betteryou is a good convenient brand.

I used Betteryou 4000IU between March and May my D levels went from about 45 to 80 nmol/L

I was taking the 50 per day, 2 tablets for 5 months. I got my Vit D levels tested and I'm low

3000iu with 3000iu of k2 in a spray

Somethingmissing... 10 µg (micrograms) = 400 iu . That's enough for bone health to prevent you dying from rickets/osteomalacia. But the bones get first dibs on vitamin D in the body. You need much higher amounts for the immunological benefits to kick in. Especially as you're BAME and won't have absorbed general background levels of UVB that white people can by being out & about in the summer months. Everybody though needs D in winter.

If you'd rather err on the conservative side of dosing, I'd recommend 1000 - 2000 iu per day as a minimum, which would probably raise your levels 25 - 50 nmol/l after around 3 months. The recommended optimum blood levels are 100 - 150 nmol/l, so aim for that ballpark ideally. Get one of the postal blood tests if you can after a few weeks so you can adjust your dose accordingly.

The average Vitamin D levels in the UK population are around 37 for men and 39 for women. If you take a supplement of 4000 iu (100 micrograms)... that will raise your levels to around 135 nmol/l, which is what an Israeli study found was the ideal level for prevention of Covid.

@MuthaFunka61

I also follow Dr Campbell and take 2000ug daily with k2 and magnesium.

I take this.

Do you really mean 2000ug or do you mean 2000IU?

Sorry, I mean 2000iu!!

Those saying they take K2 also, is that a D3/K2 combined supplement or are you taking K2 separately?

You can buy them combined and separately

1000 iu = 25 mcg/micrograms/µg

1000 IU but might increase.

Why the K2????

You can also get K2 from eating a full fat unprocessed animal product rich diet, think France 🇫🇷 and probably explains the French paradox... lots of cream, butter and pâté etc, but much lower levels of heart disease compared to other comparable European neighbours. It's because K2 helps shepherd calcium to where it should be in the bones and teeth, and away from where it's harmful where hypercalcaemia can cause calcification in the arteries and kidney stones etc. So lots of grass fed butter, liver and other offal, full fat milk cream & yoghurt, gouda cheese, grass fed red meats, genuine pastured outdoor eggs. Veggies can look out for a Japanese food called natto, which is sticky fermented soya beans and super high in K2... but, um, let's just say it's an acquired taste