Dr. Angela Agrios, ND
My very talented Naturopathic Doctor
She treats a wide variety of conditions
Office & phone appointments available
Los Angeles, CA (Pacific Palisades)
Naturopathic Medicine
Vitamin D3 5,000 IU Improves Immune Function Interview with Dr. Angela Agrios, ND My personal naturopathic doctor. Dr. Agrios is in Los Angeles and
accepts office and phone appointments.
Vitamin D is just a rock star. We should all really be taking vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D comes in little capsules and gel caps, and now we have emulsified drops (Genestra D-Mulsion 1000). Emulsified Vitamin D is great because a lot of people have issues absorbing fats, and so this would go for any fat-soluble nutrient, if you can get an emulsified version of it. Even fish oils, it’s great to take emulsified things if you suspect that you have any problem with fat absorption. You can also take a digestive enzyme known as lipase, which will help you break down fats. Anybody who has gull bladder issues is going to have a harder time digesting fats. We need bile to emulsify our fats.
I put all my patients on about 5,000 IU of vitamin D, which I know a lot of people think is really high. Well, first it was like, “Okay. We could do 1,000 to 2,000 IUs.” I've been looking at people’s blood work solidly for three and a half years, and the studies really say their goal is to get the serum levels between 60 and 80 nanograms per deciliter. You will not get those levels on the 1,000 IU per day of vitamin D. And I’ve been looking and looking and looking, and really, around the 5,000 IU dose tends to be perfect.
When people are initially really low, I will give them 10,000 IU of vitamin D for three months to get them to higher levels, and then I’ll leave them on a 5,000 IU type of maintenance dose. Everybody stays in the 50 to 60 nanogram per deciliter amount of Vitamin D. Even at 10,000 IU of vitamin D some people still can't get up there at that dose, and they're still in like, the 38 kind of range. So I feel that 5,000 IU of Vitamin D is actually very, very safe. It is fat soluble.
Some of these are in little capsules. If it’s not in a soft gel in that it’s already sitting in oil, you really need to take these with oils to improve the absorption. So nut butters, fish oils – whatever you're taking – but just to get some grease in there so that if it’s a dry capsule form, you're getting full absorption.
The big news is that vitamin D very anti-cancer. Lots and lots of cancers, very anti-cancer, and we have a big problem in our society with increased cancer rates. So that’s one of the number one reasons to take vitamin D. Vitamin D also really helps regulate our immune system. Vitamin D keeps us healthy. It enhances immune function, but it’s also very immune modulating, so this is another one that’s like a superstar when it comes to autoimmune diseases.
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I have a practice full of autoimmune cases, and vitamin D helps greatly in terms of just modulating those inflammation levels. Vitamin D also helps with bone health – it helps get calcium into the bone. It increases the absorption of calcium as well that we’re eating in the diet, so that’s a good thing to do. And calcium is really prevalent in dark organic leafy greens, sesame seeds, so we don’t need to be consuming dairy to get calcium. That’s another point I just want to point out. Calcium is in dairy, but it’s in a lot of other places that we can absorb it really well from.
Vitamin D also has an antioxidant function. Vitamin D is needed for adequate blood levels of insulin. So for people who have any kind of glycemic or diabetic issues like diabetes, I thought that that was another interesting plug for vitamin D.
And I would not stay on doses above 10,000 IU of Vitamin D long-term without supervision, so I would just say that – that this is a fat soluble nutrient, so we don’t want to really exceed that range without supervision.
And vitamin D3 is the form of vitamin D that we want to be buying. 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 is what I put all my patients on first. If they're low, they go higher, but 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 is the maintenance dose, and I would feel very comfortable without even checking blood levels at this point because I’ve seen it so many times. Forty to 60 nanograms per deciliter is where people end up, and some people are even lower than that. And 60 to 80 nanograms per deciliter is really the optimum zone, according to research studies.
