[troutman]

Blog from Dec 2010:

New Recommendations for Calcium and Vitamin D Intake


http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/...amin-d-intake/

A couple of my correspondents have been screening their patients for vitamin D deficiency and they report that at least half fall in the “very low” category <20ng/mL. Doctors are giving large doses (often a weekly 50,000 IU pill for several weeks) to quickly get their patients back into the “normal” range. Then a 2000 IU or even a 5000 IU daily dose can be necessary to keep them at that level. Are they treating a true deficiency? Or are they uselessly trying to move people from one side of a normal bell curve to the other? When half of our patients fall into the “abnormal” category, it bothers me.

There can be too much of a good thing. Gary Null inadvertently sounded a note of caution when he managed to poison himself with one of his own products. The manufacturer of Null’s Ultimate Power Meal supplement got the math wrong (by a factor of a thousand, no less!) and overloaded the supplement with 2,000,000 IU of vitamin D instead of 2000 IU. Null nearly died. The IOM recommends an upper limit of 4000 IU a day.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20101...ease-vitamin-d

The majority of Americans and Canadians are getting sufficient vitamin D and calcium, the new guidelines state. Some adolescent girls aged 9-18 may fall below the daily recommended level of calcium intake, and some elderly people may have an inadequate intake of calcium and vitamin D.