So,
The question was raised as to whether or not I had heard that high levels of Vitamin D can cause heart damage.
The short answer: No, I had not heard this.
But, I have the Internets and this morning I had a spare 3.73 minutes so I went a Googling.
Everything that I came across in those few short minutes said the exact opposite. Vitamin D is extremely beneficial to the heart.
So, I decided to just search for Vitamin D overdose levels and things along that line.
Did you know that it's incredibly hard to overdose on Vitamin D. You'll know that you're getting there when you start shooting Vitamin D violently out of both ends.
Here was something incredibly interesting that I ran across:
"The single most important fact anyone needs to know about vitamin D is how much nature supplies if we behave naturally, e.g., go into the sun. Humans make at least 10,000 units of vitamin D within 30 minutes of full body exposure to the sun, what is called a minimal erythemal dose." (Link to article - I was super-speeding through sites so don't expect too many more references.)
The Institue of Medicine must be listening because two weeks ago, it changed its recommended dosages on Vitamin D. They used to recommend that adults take between 200 - 400 IUs a day. They have now increased that to 600. Can you say, "Wow!"? Can you say it without thinking "Lame!" at the same time?
One article did say that if you took 40,000 IUs every day for several years, there could be some negative consequences. It didn't say what those consequences were and I didn't go look because I'm not planning on taking 40,000 IUs every day for several years. In fact, I don't take Vitamin D in the summer when I'm doing my nekkid Ra worshipping.
Here's another interesting snippet:
"In fact, in East Germany between the 1940's and 1960's, children would ROUTINELYget 6 doses of 600,000 IU's of Vitamin D between birth and 18 months old." (Voila! - another link.)
Another article pointed out something similar, giving shots of Vitamin D in the hundreds of thousands of International Units as a pre-treatment for rickets for babies.
There you have it (at least you have what I could find during my spare minutes). People that don't get sunshine on a large percentage of their skin should be taking Vitamin D and even my recommendation might have been low. People might find it helpful to take at least 6,000 IUs a day and possibly up to 10,000 IUs a day.
Before you do that, you should check out the research yourself of course. I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on my blog.
I do take Vitamin D though.
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