I became interested in Vitamin D years ago after reading The Vitamin D solution, and then running a personal experiment supplementing Vitamin D, during which I didn’t get the cold for more than two years. Even in a full-blown winter in Germany in which all my relatives got sick, the flu didn’t catch me once.
Years later the covid epidemic arrived and some studies about vitamin d came to my attention. I thought it’d be time to study this topic once again, so I ended up buying this book. It’s just what I needed!
This book explains the benefits of high doses of Vitamin D through a doctor’s personal experience as well as through his patient’s results. It also explains why the dietary guidelines on Vitamin D are flawed.
Here are my highlights from the book:
Introduction – Welcome to Your Ideal Health with Vitamin D3 Optimal Dosing
When vitamin D3 levels in your blood are optimal, your immune system, depth of sleep, and metabolism are primed to function at their greatest potential.
Chapter 2 – Vitamin D3 Awakening
My conclusion: the current recommended dosing was not enough. Only with much larger doses would a person’s blood level budge. However, once they stopped that larger dosing, they couldn’t maintain those adequate blood levels of vitamin D3. Because the body uses vitamin D3, it constantly needs more. If not supplied, the blood level drops. Whether fat-soluble or not, if there isn’t enough vitamin D, the blood level drops. I hadn’t expected to find this. After all, there is a lot of sunshine in Laredo.
Dr. Gominak’s recommended dosing was much greater than that recommended by the AAFP or IOM. She recommended 20,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day for six weeks and then a reduction to 10,000 IU per day. Her dosing would raise blood levels up to approximately the 50–60 ng/ml level.
Chapter 3 – Some Background on Vitamin D3
There’s vitamin D3 in the “cholecalciferol” form, which is made by our skin, found in some foods, and we can take it in supplement form. Besides cholecalciferol, vitamin D3 comes in two other forms. There is the blood form of vitamin D3 called “calcifediol” and the active form, “calcitriol.”
Because other fat-soluble vitamins that accumulate in the body prove toxic and dangerous, these early scientists assumed this must be true of vitamin D as well. Therefore, they determined that the lowest dose of vitamin D that would prevent rickets was all any individual should ingest. Thus, this low “safe” dose of vitamin D became the standard. Doses above this standard were assumed to be approaching toxic.
in essence, biomarker plasma 25(OH)D is calcifediol, one of the three main forms of vitamin D3 in the human body and the form of vitamin D3 measured to determine the level of vitamin D3 in the blood. Thus, we can read “biomarker plasma 25(OH)D” as meaning “vitamin D3.”
To return to the question posed at the start of this chapter: how was this toxicity level — 100 ng/ml — determined? Apparently, the scientists responsible for determining that level took the data-supported level for D3 toxicity — 300 ng/ml — and arbitrarily cut it down by two-thirds to arrive at the official blood level of D3 toxicity — 100 ng/ml. Though they knew 100 ng/ml wasn’t actually toxic, or near toxic, they designated it as the threshold to toxicity because they thought they were helping people be safe.
Because of this arbitrary decision, researchers and scientists since who have pursued study of vitamin D3 have spent time researching vitamin D3 at doses and blood levels so low that little of benefit did or could come from their research. As a result, their studies have incorrectly confirmed the mistaken belief that vitamin D3 is but a minor hormone whose only useful function is to prevent rickets and aid in calcium balance.
Chapter 4 – Winter Syndrome: Shadow Epidemic
Low vitamin D signals our brain that we need to fatten ourselves up. The problem is that we have plenty of food, but reality and logic don’t stand a chance against the body’s hormonal signaling.
“Winter syndrome” is the name I’m calling the symptoms that result from the body getting signaled to go into winter-survival mode due to prolonged suboptimal levels of vitamin D in the blood.
During that day outside in the sun, you likely felt very alive and invigorated but then got very tired that night and slept well.
When you do optimal dosing of vitamin D3 supplements, you will increase your blood level of vitamin D3 so that it stabilizes at an optimum level for your body to experience what I call “Madison-HannaH effects.” Madison-HannaH effects mean that your body is primed to be at its healthiest.
It was only when patients took 20,000 IU per day that they reported a noticeable positive effect — better sleep and overall better feeling. However, when these patients dropped down to Dr. Gominak’s recommended stable dosing of 10,000 IU per day, without exception, they reported returned sleep difficulties and loss of that state of good feeling.
I continued to experiment and soon increased my personal dose to 30,000 IU per day. After a year or so with no ill effects and many notable improvements, I recommended to all the patients under my care that they too take 30,000 IU per day of vitamin D3. All my future patients started at this dose. And it has been working great.
I’ve come to the conclusion that with optimal vitamin D3 dosing at 30,000 IU per day, the optimal level of vitamin D3 in the blood should be between 100–140 ng/ml.
Chapter 5 – Optimizing the Immune System’s Potential
Remember, that while ODA of vitamin D3 boosts sleep and so many other aspects of optimal health, it takes time to restore a person’s health, especially if deficient for decades.
With patients that were sick from the flu, I would touch their hands and get close to them. Guess what happened? I never contracted the flu in eight years-plus. Not even once. Despite my frequent contacts with patients ill with the flu not once did I become ill. My protection: optimal dosing and optimal blood levels of vitamin D3.
First, because the gut contains a significant amount of our total immune system and our vitamin D3 blood levels reflect the tenacity of our whole immune system, the two are certainly connected.
Chapter 6 – Vitamin D3 and Consistently Good Sleep
A 2017 study showed a significant improvement in sleep in those taking vitamin D3 versus a placebo. In this study 44 subjects were taking 50,000 IUs of vitamin D3 per two weeks — thus, a dose equivalent of 3,415 IUs per day — and 45 subjects were taking a placebo. The findings: the sleep quality scores of those taking vitamin D3 were significantly greater than those taking the placebo
Chapter 7 – Vitamin D3, Metabolic Activity, and Weight Loss
What appeared more typical among my patients taking ODA of vitamin D3 was each patient losing around ten pounds per month. Patients who were underweight ended up gaining weight.
With this explanation our struggles and eventual failures with diets upon diets suddenly makes sense. When a person goes on a diet and cuts their calorie consumption, the body, which was already working as if it was in a time of food scarcity (due to winter syndrome), panics. Rather than shedding excess weight, when a dieter cuts calories, the body slows the metabolism even more, so that little or no weight is lost, or so that weight is gained from the fewer calories that are consumed. Hence, the person on the diet feels like they failed, so they stop — only to try again later on, but the cycle repeats. Why? Because the whole time, the person has winter syndrome; hence, their body is primed for food scarcity. The solution: optimal dosing of vitamin D3 to get the body out of winter syndrome and get the body’s metabolic responses in line with the vast food available to us all year long in our modern lives
In fact, once at optimal levels of vitamin D3, until the body fat levels are reduced to ideal levels, your food consumption will decrease below what is needed. This burning off of fat is assisted by the metabolism increasing twenty to thirty percent.
As I see it, vitamin D3 at optimal doses is the ideal “weight loss drug” because it addresses three different factors: minimizing fat absorption in the small intestine, increasing the metabolism by twenty to thirty percent, and decreasing the appetite. On top of this, vitamin D3 isn’t a new compound developed in a lab. It’s a hormone that the body can produce on its own. Taking it in optimal doses in supplement form is more natural and simpler than taking a chemist-created and patented pharmaceutical. Vitamin D3 does not try and trick the body. Optimal dosing of vitamin D3, in fact, puts the body and mind into a more normal balance.