Recent Vitamin D article

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I've taken vitamin D for years and still take it now.

Jan

It is nice that more medical research is  being done on vitamin D, and published.  For an advocacy link site, vitaminDwiki is hard to beat.  I've asked doctors about vitamin D for years, and found most of them ignorant on modern research and clinical experience.  Both of us apparently nearly got nailed on hypovitamin D, thanks to RDA (non)thinkers.

For those in the front lines of a cancer fight, there are more pressing possible choices than whether a 40-50 ng/mL (100-125 nmol/L) blood level is beneficial to mCRC patients.  This 40-50ng/mL might be achieved with 2000 iu, 5000iu, 10,000iu or even more per day, depending on patient issues. 

When our CRC journey first began,  my wife took 12,000 iu/day for two weeks, along with a number of supplements and cimetidine.  After we received additional supplies, she took 17,000 iu/day and added the therapeutic vitamin K2 (MK4) dose sometimes used in Japan for osteoporosis or liver cancer, until surgery two more weeks later.  After 4-5 months, her vitamin D level was up to 30ng/mL (75 nmol/L) while on the mildest 5FU level.

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After the first surgery, 4 weeks post dx, our surgeon's first words were, "I didn't get it all" -  he used one unit of blood and quit scraping/digging before a puncture or bleed out in the peritoneum.  However, a massive immune reaction had necrosed most met deposits, apparently including the bit(s) left behind. The surgeon and pathologist didn't know what to make of it, but it sounded like some of the cimetidine papers I had seen.  Mentally, I  give immune credit to cimetidine and the supplements including the high vitamin D. 

There appear to be several possible vitamin D3 use levels  beyond 100 ng/mL, for mCRC situations. First, 100-200 ng/mL blood levels, or second, 50,000 iu/d to, in extremis, 100,000 iu per day.  The third has no modern experience reported.   The 100-200 ng/mL levels are hinted at in VitaminDwiki.  50,000 ng/mL was used in daily practice for diabetes with related kidney and cardiology issues for years, by JJ Prendergast, MD, an endocrinologist trained at UCSF.   Prendergast spent decades doing his research, and associated with Stanford for some years.  He incidentally had some outstanding vitamin D experiences with cancer, that he expanded on in his last decade of practice (after 6 minutes in the video). He is now retired in his  80s.    

The main thing about "vitamin D toxicity"  is that many people are short on magnesium, maybe boron, and/or vitamin K2, and overdosed on calcium. 

By the second surgery, my wife was doing up to 30-40,000 iu per day. To do it over now, we'd use 50,000 iu/day before initial surgery, adjustments on magnesium, K2, and calcium.

I'm on 5Kiu as well and my D levels are still about 25% below normal but much better than before.

SandiaBuddy said:

Doses

I have been taking 5,000iu of vitamin D and 1200mg of calcium.  My D level started out at 29ng/ml, and was 64ng/ml last test.  I am planning to increase to 10,000iu of D.  Do you think I should limit or eliminate the calcium?  I do currently take 120mcg of K2 every other day.

I had very low vit D levels, and my dr had me on the prescription form (D2) 50,000iu twice a week.  Months later, it had very little effect.  The Integrative Med specialist told me to get D3 and take 20,000iu/day for a week and then we'd drop to a maintenance level.  My vit D levels normalized within weeks of that regimen.  I currently take 10,000 iu of D3 daily, as any less than that and my levels drop.  (My family does not metabolize vitamin D properly.  My 2 sisters, one of whom lives in Hawaii and is outside all the time, the other is a farmer, and spends much of the day outside, both have low D-levels and need supplements.)

As for the calcium:  the same integrative med dr told me that they've seen problems now with taking that much calcium (1,000mg) in supplement form.  She advised me to limit my supplements to 500-600mg/day, and get the rest of the calcium from food.  

SandiaBuddy said:

Thanks

Thanks abrub and Tanstaafl:

I will drop the calcium but keep up the D3.  Last time I had a blood test, the calcium was in the normal range however.  The Vitamin K I am taking says "K-2(MK7, MK4) and K-1."  I really have no idea of what that means.

menaquinone-7,  a storage form that has to be re-formed to MK-4 to be active but has more persistence at low doses.  

menaquinone-4, the most active form that has its own human transport protein that apparently tends to wash out but is used theraputically in Japan.

K-1 = phytoquinone, the most common, least active cwommercial form from plants that replaced K-3 in the 1950s for safety in elephant sized baby shots.   

Btw, I'm actually somewhat bimodal about calcium levels for actual mCRC treatment.  The extra K2 drives bone deposition, a good thing, and enhances 5FU kill for some kinds of nasty CRC but drops calcium levels. 

However during the first 7 months of supplementation, my did use extra calcium too at 12-17000 iu D3, along with high dose MK4.  Then we switched to higher D3 without much MK4 and calcium (ran out overseas) and still had about 200 mcg MK7.  She had high normal calcium levels (near nominal UL) the first year of chemo and one of the 6mm lung thingys did turn to stone...  So there's that.

Without the extra calcium and some other changes, some things in the liver shrank and broke up while on immunochemo in year 2.  

Never did pay much attention to my Vitamin D levels before but when they told me that CRC patients usually had low levels and when they took my blood mine was definitely low.  I'm now on 2,000 per day and because my insurance won't pay for it, every other year I'll have it checked.  It's been fine ever since.  They also say that it helps with the calcium pill to be more effective. 

Kim

JanJan63 said:

I can't take calcium. I have

I can't take calcium. I have a benign tumour on my parathyroid which tells it to put extra calcium in my blood. I have to go every few months and have an IV drug to reduce the level. Too much calcium makes a person very fatigued. My doctor told my husband that if he woke up one morning with his calcium level as high as mine was before treatment he probably wouldn't be able to get out of bed. But that I must have adapted to it.

I think I might up my vitamin D intake after reading all these posts.

Jan

I had the same issue,  and they removed the affected parathyroid gland. (We have 4, and only need a piece of one.) Since then I've been cured of my "primary hyperparathyroidism" and no longer have to be concerned about calcium intake. 

Yes, I have zero doubt that Vitamin D exposure is one of the keys to getting a handle on this disease.  Like many of you I live in a cold northern climate, and have a difficult time getting enough natural sun exposure.  I don't have the scientific background or expertise as many of you, only antidotal experience of fighting stage4 cancer for 9 years now.  I can state firsthand that for a long-time I had a golf-ball size tumor in my supraclavicular lymph nodes of my neck.  The pain was pretty constant, regardless of what I was doing.  However, I had a few times over that time perioid when I was on chemo breaks and would take trips to visit a friend in Hawaii.  I starting speanding 30 minutes plus in the bright sun, almost to the point of being sunburned.  Honestly, within a few days the pain in my neck would diminish by about 90%.  Obviously my body was telling me something.  However, due to other commitments I would always come back to Oregon, and within days my neck would begin hurting again.

One mystery is that no matter how much vitamin D I took while in Oregon, it didn't seem to have much effect on neck pain.  However, the natural sunshine in Hawaii clearly brought pain relief while on my chemo breaks.  We're other factors involved, I can't say for certain, but I noticed this phenomenon 3 different times.  I finally received radiation to my neck which has been successful in removing cancer from that part of my body-- however the cancer is still in my retroperitoneal lymph nodes and I'm still stage 4.

I'm seriously thinking about moving to a tropical climate at this point, as I still have not found a natural weapon (in my opinion) to fighting this disease better then natural sunshine.  I'm currently taking 5,000- 10,000 IU daily but have not seen any benefit from it.  I think you possibly need to take more, or more likely, need natural sunshine.  Just my two cents.   

I recall that D affects the expression of nearly 1,000 genes, so has implications for our overall health status.   

Another good resource for pulling together science based information about Vit D is  Grassroots Health   https://grassrootshealth.net/     They have a video library which includes talks by many of the D researchers.

Magnesium (Mg) is also a supplement I use as it, like D, also has gobal health effects, affecting the expression of 100s of genes.

I live in Florida and have made a point of sitting in the sun in shorts most days for about 15 minutes.   In testing found this sun exposure to have little effect when compared to supplementation.  Some of that may be because I'm older and dont' convert as well.   

Testing is a must.   It takes 2 to 3 months to reach new D equilibrium levels, so if one is low supplementing with higher doses for a short period at the outset seems a reasonable course.