Vitamin D Update 2025
I subscribe to a few science magazines and one of my favorites is Science Focus out of the UK. They have had a few articles about vitamin D in recent issues and I am summarizing here.
A study in Nutrition Reviews has indicated that taking vitamin D2 can lower your D3 levels even below placebo levels. D3 is the form that your body makes from light exposure on your skin. D2 tends to come from plants and mushrooms and is often what we find clients are taking as prescribed by their medical doctor.
The researchers studied this because they think D3 is the preferred form. D3 can be converted into D2. Therefore if you take your D3, you can make sure you have adequate D2 and D3 for all those immune and calcium modulation functions.
Research and Benefits of Vitamin D and Covid
In 2024, researchers published a review of 58 studies looking at vitamin D and Covid-19. People with sufficient D blood levels were less likely to develop LONG COVID.
Also in 2024 another couple of studies reported positive findings with vitamin D and blood glucose management and help with a more balanced gut microbiome that in turn helped with the immune response to cancer. Other researchers reported that vitamin D can be beneficial for autoimmune issues.
Researchers looked at key indicators of body age such as telomere length, cardiovascular health and level of cognitive health. The results indicate that vitamin D helps in all of these.
If you want to know more about D and telomeres: Vitamin D supplements may slow cellular aging
Bottom line? We recommend blood testing to see what your levels are before and after supplementation. We like to see levels between 60 and 80 ng/ml. Without supplementation, we often see levels closer to 25 which we don’t find adequate to get the benefits.
To get to those levels, most will need about 5000 IUs per day. It is not unusual in our blood testing experience to find that doses closer to 10,000 IUs per day are required.
We recommend running your own blood tests through Direct Labs. They are licensed in all but a couple of states if my memory serves.
DS 2025