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There's a growing list of research publications that implicate the gut biome in ... well most disorders. It's hard to see the forest for the trees because of the implications - but there is a growing body of evidence that "metabolics" or in layman's terms your "gut health" is one of the easiest ways to effect psychological changes.
Also, everyone who can afford $50 should get their serum vitamin D levels tested, just for fun. The recommendation is 30 ng/ml - but this is to prevent rickets or whatever - not for optimal body and brain function - that number is, well, it's 100ng/ml. There's marginal risk to going over 100ng/ml, but this can be mitigated by additional supplements of vitamin K and Calcium*. As far as i know, vitamin D works either outside of or in tandem with the gut flora and fauna, but does fit in to "metabolic", right?
I'm sorry your friend has had such issues.
* reputable vitamin manufacturers know this and will produce high-potency vitamin D supplements with all three, or at least D and K as a single pill.
Be careful with that. Large doses of vitamin D are dangerous - and have literally been used as poison in an attempted murder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41395893
Pay real close attention to what i said, i said "you want about 100ng/ml, and if more, you want vitamin K" - if that person's doctors had suspected vitamin D at any point and had them start taking K in the interim, they may have not been hospitalized so many times.
My information about vitamin D is from two decades of reading papers about it and watching experts discuss it via video and interview notes. The 100ng/ml portions are state of the art in discussions about vitamin D deficiency, as of, well, Q1 2024.
per your covid reference, there's a reason that 50,000IU or more, dosed 2-4 times (over 2-4 days!) was recommended for certain people with covid.
>Although it is not known what the safe upper value for 25(OH)D is for avoiding hypercalcemia, most studies in children and adults have suggested that the blood levels need to be *above 150 ng/ml* before there is any concern. Therefore, an UL of 100 ng/ml provides a safety margin in reducing risk of hypercalcemia [0].
well, that reinforces what i said. weird, that. also:
>But in 2011, the respected Endocrine Society issued a report urging a much, much higher minimum blood level of vitamin D. At that time, their experts concluded: "Based on all the evidence, at a minimum, we recommend vitamin D levels of 30 ng/mL, and because of the vagaries of some of the assays, to guarantee sufficiency, we recommend between 40 and 60 ng/mL for both children and adults."
so your information is at least 13 years out of date (and science marches on, as i mentioned, my ~100ng/ml is from Q1 of this year.) Technically, the research i heard and read hedged saying 80-100ng/ml "is probably the best range" - specifically to avoid hypercalcemia which occurs as noted above when the concentration is over 150ng/ml. Basically, if you tell people *only* that vitamin D is good and they should dose themselves, you get people taking 50,000IU/day for months, without Vitamin K and/or proper monitoring.
There's a reason that the "general" recommendation is 600-800IU/day for children and adults, it's because "vitamin D is good so more vitamin D is better" and while technically true there's that hypercalcemia risk "gotcha."
Anyhow, it's not my duty or job to convince you of anything.
This is not about convincing me. It is about converting me. If you can convert me, I will convert many others, but you don't have the evidence to do it. If you are going to ask someone to gamble on a higher level, at least they deserve to know exactly why.
No risk of hypercalcemia in patients taking extremely large doses of vitamin D - D blood levels of 118ng/ml and calcium levels at 9.6 (8.5 - 10.6 is normal) not sure of the units and don't care since it's in the same range.
oh and it was (mentioned in the DOI hotlink above) used to treat tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma - blood levels over 100ng/ml. I am unsure of what sort of evidence you need for ~100ng/ml being optimal. Preventing or curing covid? Preventing cancers? aiding treatment of cancer? Psychological and neurological health?
In fact, that paper explains why the limit was set to 50ng/ml, so maybe that will nudge you a bit ;-)
If you don't have time; partially an IU of D is the amount a 10 gram mouse needs, daily. So a 60kg human needs 6000IU, daily. Overweight people need more, underweight people need less. This was discovered ages ago (several decades).