What You Thought You Knew of D3, Hardly Scratches the Surface

Updated Feb. 6th 2025

Very early on in the pandemic, before the vaccine rollout, I wrote of the potential benefits of vitamin D3 for COVID-19. I spoke of the mechanisms of action D3 executes in protecting us from viral infections. Why dark skinned people would be more susceptible to COVID and how D3 could potentially protect us from severe disease…

There Is Another Pandemic Besides COVID-19 Ravaging the Globe (April 2020)

Deficient Vitamin D status might be a severe risk factor for COVID-19 (April 2020)

And as the pandemic went along and more studies were done, it was nice to know my early assessments were correct. D3 very much protects you from severe disease. And quite a few studies have shown this. None more impressive than this small study in Spain.

What this chart below shows,… is when hospitalized COVID patients were given the fast acting form of vitamin D (calcifediol) they didn’t progress to severe disease. It kept them out of the ICU.

Effect of calcifediol treatment among patients hospitalized for COVID-19: A pilot randomized clinical study (Oct. 2020)

Out of 50 hospitalized patients who received calcifediol, only one progressed and needed intensive care. Whereas half the controls, without calcifediol, ended up in the ICU. Now detractors might say this is a small study, with very little weight. But with this kind of mammoth result, it would be unethical to subject more people in a larger control group to such unnecessary risks in further studies. If you were to flip 50 coins in the air, what are the odds that only one or two or even three would come up heads, and the rest tails. Or visa versa. The odds are astronomical that this study was a result by chance.

What is interesting,.. is that regular vitamin D3, the kind found in supplements, wouldn’t have this effect found in the study above. The raw form created in your skin, and found in supplements, takes a couple of weeks to become the fast acting form measured in blood levels (25 hydroxy vitamin D or calcifediol). It takes the liver that long to convert cholecalciferol (D3) to 25 hydroxy vitamin D. There is also another process in this chain done by your kidneys after it leaves the liver. But that process is fairly quick compared to the conversion in the liver. So, if the patients in this study were given regular D3, they wouldn’t have had any benefits,… for at least two weeks. It wouldn’t have had this fast acting response in protecting them from the ICU. And this is the major issue with any vitamin D study concerning COVID. Such as this fraudulent study in Turkey, giving bolus doses of D3 to patients in the ICU. If doctors or scientists, don’t know about D3 metabolism, they should be locked up for gross negligence. That’s just how I feel. It’s a criminal act, playing with people’s lives. They must be given the fast acting form, calcifediol, to have any fast acting benefit. To illustrate this, Dr. David Grimes consultant physician, presented these charts, showing the fast and slow forms of Vitamin D.

This first chart shows the fast acting calcifediol (25 hydroxy vitamin D) raising blood levels in a couple of hours….

In the next chart below, you see the raw slow supplement form (cholecalciferol) needing a couple of weeks…

Mind you, these two charts above are decades old. So no excuses can be made for any researcher, using cholecalciferol (regular D3) on ICU patients.

This last chart shows critically ill COVID-19 patients in hospitals in Galilee, Israel. Not one had decent D3 blood levels….

It’s nice to see I was correct, very early on about vitamin D having benefits for COVID-19. But that shouldn’t be the only reason for taking D3. Since 2007, 45,000 studies have been done on Vitamin D's benefits to health. More now since I first mentioned this early 2020. And that research continues to this day.  When you are insufficient, you are more susceptible to a wide range of conditions. Hypertension, cancer, diabetes, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia, cardiovascular disease, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc, etc… Not to mention more vulnerable to viral and bacterial infections. I give many examples of this in my earlier article…

Deficient Vitamin D status might be a severe risk factor for COVID-19 (April 2020)

It’s been found to differentially express over 1,200 genes, mostly related to epigenetic modification and immune function. This is after they found vitamin D receptors (VDR) on the nucleus of most cells in the body, in the year 1974. I was in High School at the time, so biology and chemistry has been rewritten since I first studied those subjects.

Something tells me people aren’t taking vitamin D seriously, and this needs to change. A few people I told about vitamin D, are taking gummy bears and multi-vitamins, thinking that will help. They don’t understand the goal in taking D3. To raise blood levels in the neighborhood of 50 ng/ml or higher. And you will not do that with gummy bears or multi’s. I was one of these people before the pandemic came along. I was taking a multi-vitamin with 1,000 IU’s of D3 for a year, playing ball in the sun, and when I had my blood levels checked, I was borderline deficient. So don’t believe for a second, that the fairly new RDA of 800 IU’s (previously 600) is even close to being enough. It’s a very cruel joke.

Most doctors will recommend 2,000 IU’s daily when their patient is insufficient. But that too is woefully inadequate. You need at least double that to raise blood levels anywhere close to 50 ng/ml.

That should be the minimum blood level you should be striving for. Any blood level up to 100ng/ml is completely safe. Any cause for concern starts at 150 ng/ml.

50,000 IU's weekly of D3 will raise your blood levels to 60-70 ng/ml and will not surpass that, even with that continued dosage. That’s like 7,000 IU’s daily.

“Vitamin D3 therapy (50,000-100,000 IU/week) was safe and effective when given for 12 months….. Serum vitamin D rarely exceeded 100 ng/ml, never reached toxic levels.” Safety of 50,000-100,000 Units of Vitamin D3/Week in Vitamin D-Deficient (2016)

A couple of caveats when taking generous amounts of D3…

1. It is recommended not to supplement calcium if you supplement D3, unless under a doctor’s supervision. One of the first benefits shown for vitamin D, was its ability to increase calcium absorption. But too much calcium can be harmful. Doctors regularly check levels when doing any blood work. Calcium is one of only a few minerals, or vitamins that doctors check with any regularity. They generally don’t check vitamin D levels, unless you ask them. There is no shortage of calcium in the food supply, so supplementing calcium would only be necessary for those with some sort of condition. And even then, you should get a second opinion and know the risks.

2. Vitamin K2 (Mk-7) should be supplemented along with D3. On top of the fact that the majority of the population is short of this vitamin as well, it works synergistically with D3 in regulating calcium. It will protect against hypercalcemia. And Mk-7 is very important to our health in its own right. Everything You Need To Know About Vitamin K2 - YouTube

3. Magnesium is another nutrient the majority of the population is lacking. And it is a co-factor for the enzymes that metabolize D3. Not to mention it is involved in over 300 other biochemical processes in the body. Chelated magnesium works best. i.e… Glycinate, Malate, etc.. Best absorption and easiest on the stomach.

So it is recommended to take K2 (Mk-7) and magnesium along with D3,.. and to avoid extra calcium.

Below is Dr. David Grimes explaining the charts I posted above and other tidbits. I have never heard of him until recently. And let me say, he is quite a find. I have to thank John Campbell for having him share his wealth of knowledge with us. He is a treasure trove of information.

                                      The Second Pandemic - YouTube

It just doesn’t make sense to handicap yourself. Practically everyone is in need of some D3. Especially those with dark skin, the elderly, the obese, and those living in the northern latitudes. Strong immune function is still necessary to ward off ongoing threats. COVID-19 has shown to increase risks to our health with repeated infections. 10 bucks can buy you peace of mind that your D3 blood levels will remain at an optimal level for an entire year. And with the money you save on D3, you can also get its co-factors,.. Mk-7 and Magnesium. Which you are also very likely short of. Correcting insufficiencies,… is the number one reason to take supplemental nutrients. Together, they optimize immune function, while adding many layers of protection.

Why recommended blood levels of 50 ng/ml? Cause that is what people have living near the equator who get plenty of sun. See, over there UVB rays reach the ground year round. And only UVB rays produce D3. In the northern and far southern latitudes, UVB rays only reach the ground a few hours each day during their spring and summer months. So that is why 50 ng/ml is the goal.

“The human genome was selected with abundance of vitamin D. Humans evolved in the sun near the equator, synthesizing robust quantities of vitamin D in the skin. Research has shown that lifeguards, farmers near the equator, and sun dwelling hunter gatherers maintain blood levels between 40-80 ng/ml on sun exposure alone” The Vitamin D Council

Unfortunately, The Vitamin D Council is now defunct. The man who established the popular non-profit back in 2003, had financial difficulties keeping it alive. He said it was a victim of insider fraud. You can still get most of its info at the Wayback Machine.

Regardless, other non-profit organizations have surfaced and are in complete agreement with the quote above, based on evidence seen in East African populations.

On the other hand, experts at the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) at the National Academies of Sciences, recommend avoiding D3 blood levels above 50–60 ng/ml. It found that even lower serum levels (approximately 30–48 ng/ml) are associated with increased rates in all-cause mortality, cancer, and cardiovascular events. But that seems really ridiculous, being levels below 30 ng/ml are generally considered to be insufficient. Mind you,… these are the expert idiots who created the RDA of 600 IU’s for D3. And as shown above, this amount will ensure you remain deficient. I would just love to get my hands on the data that they based this on, and the studies showing this rise in all cause mortality. But this is a government agency,… and I think we all know what’s behind these ridiculous recommended intakes. The Industrial Medical Complex certainly wouldn’t want everyone to be running around healthy. That would be very bad for business. The D3 insufficiency has been in existence for decades on end. If that changed, the blow to the pharmaceutical industry would be massive. Just remember this,… 45,000 D3 studies on health have been published since 2007,… and here they are recommending amounts that will keep you deficient. I think that’s all that needs to be said on this front.

One other thing worth pondering,… with all this research on D3, and it being vital for good health and protective against COVID, how was it possible no government health official ever made mention of it during the pandemic?

COVID-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status, and a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/ml 25(OH)D3 (Oct. 2021)

Update edit:…. I have seen the studies showing some increase in mortality with higher D3 blood levels. And I don’t see any glaring conflicts of interest. In fact, they seem to have some weight to them, even though all say that causality cannot be inferred. The 3 that I have seen, have a large number of participants, have pretty long follow ups, and look to be on the up and up. One in the US, Denmark and Sweden.

An Association of All-Cause Mortality with Serum Vitamin D: The CopD Study Plasma vitamin D and mortality in older men a prospective cohort study Vitamin D Levels and the Risk of Mortality in the General Population

Funny I haven’t seen these before as none of them are new. Of the 3, the most recent one is 2012. Still, it doesn’t change the goal of having D3 blood levels of 50 ng/ml. But with this info, I wouldn’t go much higher than that. My last blood test I had close to 100 ng/ml. I’m a big guy and was taking 25,000 IU’s daily. I have dropped my intake of D3 after seeing it that high, and now may reduce it even further. There have been some studies showing benefits of higher D3 blood levels for my comorbidities. But I haven’t really seen any great improvements, so I’ll drop my levels back down to the 50 ng/ml neighborhood.

Next up, I take a deep dive into K2 (Mk-7). It’s almost the forgotten nutrient, critical for good health… Incredible Benefits of K2, the Forgotten Vitamin

Stay safe and be well….