“Chart showing Optimal Vitamin D3 levels for Various Health Outcomes”

         Vitamin D3 (25[OH]D) has many important health benefits but not all of them are known to health professionals or the public. This article, a Narrative Review, looks at the evidence for major causes of death (cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, Covid-19) with regard to D3 deficiency. Although Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard for pharmaceutical drugs, RCTs for D3 have been flawed for several reasons, discussed below.

         The strongest evidence for D3 deficiency comes from other types of studies such as ecological and observational.  The general finding is that optimal D3 concentrations, from 30ng/ml to 60ng/ml ( * ng/ml is nanograms/milliliter) , supports health and well-being, and is best achieved through supplementation. “Raising serum D3 levels to optimal concentrations will result in significant reduction in preventable illness and death [1].”

         It is estimated that 50% of the worldwide population is D3 deficient (less than 20ng/ml). PubMed records 94,000+ D3 research publications, but only since 2000 has research for non-skeletal disorders and D3 begun.  Conventional medicine focuses on treatment, not prevention. Using the WHO mortality rates from 2016, for Germany, Japan, the US, and Saudi Arabia, the authors compared diseases with the highest prevalence or mortality rates (Table 1).

         RESULTS:  The trials in this Review analyzed the following disease outcomes (pages 3 -12), along with current D3 (25[OH]D) in blood serum:                       

         Disease outcome           Protective ranges of vitamin D3*

·         Cardiovascular disease  30- 60+ ng/ml

·         Hypertension                    40 – 60+ ng/ml

·         Cancer, breast                  60+ ng/ml

·         Cancer, colorectal            30 – 45+ ng/ml

·         Type 2 diabetes               50 – 60+ ng/ml

·         SARS-CoV-2, infection   50 – 60+ ng/ml

·         Covid-19, mortality           60+ ng/ml

·         Gene expression             40 – 60+ ng/ml

·         Pre-term delivery             40 – 60+ ng/ml

·         Alzheimer’s                       25 – 60+ ng/ml

·         All-Cause Mortality           30 – 60+ ng/ml

The attached chart showing Optimal Vitamin D3 levels for Various Health Outcomes summarizes these results.  Anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 IU’s of vitamin D3 can be made by the skin [depending in skin type] with whole body exposure to sunlight, without burning.  *No toxicity symptoms have been found up to 200ng/ml. Research does not support additional benefit of a D3 level above 100ng/ml.

         The methods recommended for optimal health include a threshold measurement for each disease [as above] and with age, weight, ethnicity, gender and other risk factors considered.

Types of Studies: A discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of ecological, cross sectional, case-control, observational, prospective/retrospective cohorts, and RCTs follow on pages 14–15. All RCT studies of vitamin D3 used D3 dosage as the measured variable, as in a drug study. 

         Dr. Robert Heaney recommends starting with the D3 measurement and tracking the subject with supplementation [1].  RCTs often fail to measure beneficial outcomes because:

                     1. They do not measure blood serum levels at both baseline and follow-up,

                     2. They enroll subjects with high D3 levels to start with,

                     3. They use low dosages which cannot impact D3 levels in the blood,

                     4. They permit subjects to use additional D3 supplements,

                     5. They do not recognize that there are different D3 thresholds for different health benefits.

Link to original article: Nutrients 2022, 14(3), 639; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14030639

1. Heaney, R.P. Guidelines for optimizing design and analysis of clinical studies of nutrient effects. Nutr. Rev. 2014, 72, 

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