Do not expect your doctor to know about vitamin D

Created October 2018

Medical Students rarely get training in nutrition and, most of the nutrition courses focus on food, not sunlight nor supplements
Medical students still get less than half of the Vitamin D questions correct
There is just too much Vitamin D information to expect a non-specialists to know:
Optimal level, dose size for an individual, form of Vitamin D,risk factors, reasons for poor respose,loading doses, cofactors. etc.
The Vitamin D information is rapidly changing
- New Vitamin D evidence (4,000 studies/year), often 50 meta-analyses/year
- Vitamin D levels in people continue to drop rapidly Military, Canada, UK, US and 20 reasons
- High levels of Vitamin D require adjusting cofactors and drug potency
Doctors will lose customers/money if they prescribe an adequate amount of Vitamin D
- 21 reasons why doctors are reluctant to accept Vitamin D
The Physicians Desk Reference for doctors continues to only list Vitamin D2, not D3

Much of the information would be obsolete or wrong 10 years later
It is doubtful that much of the classroom material would be remembered anyway
Two hours is extremely unlikely anyway
- Doctors perhaps get 5 hours on nutrition, of which Vitamin D might be 10 minutes


Myth	Reality
400 IU of Vitamin D is enough	No longer enough, and more is needed if weigh than 100 lbs, have dark skin, etc
Milk provides enough	Milk barely provided enough for infants, but now most people drinklow-fat milk which provides 2.5X less Vitamin D Also - Breastfed babies rarely get any Vitamin D unless she supplements
Salmon has a lot of Vitaamin D	No longer - majority of salmon is now raised in pens (and has only 1/4 as much Vitamin D)
Stay out of the sun to avoid Cancer	20 minutes of noon-day sun provides some Vitamin D without Cancer
2,000 IU is toxic	Error was made in the 1940's Toxic is > 2,000 IU /kilogram of body weight
Vitamin D2 is as good as Vitamin D3	No: Vets concluded in 2006 that no mammal should ever be given Vitamin D2
Vitamin D can accumulate to toxic levels	No: For > 99.9% of people Vitamin D does NOT accumulate - excess is destroyed by the body
Liver and Kidneys activate Vitamin D	Actually >70% of Vitamin D activation is done by the tissues Thus topical, spray, mouthwash and perhaps inhaled Vitamin D can very important sources
Minimize cholesterol intake	No - not only does minimizing cholesterol NOT help the heart, it decreases the ability to make Vit. D
Not need Vitamin D if live in sunny climate	Air conditioning virtually eliminates people going outside during the middle of a hot day