Vitamin D is a group of steroids involved in many biological effects including body absorption of calcium, magnesium, and phosphate.
25-hydroxy vitamin D in the serum is measured to determine a person’s vitamin D status.
All-mortality risk (cardiac risk, cancer risk, etc) increases considerably as serum vitamin D levels are lower.
Prostate cancer specific mortality risk is similar to the chart shown below.
However, if serum vitamin D levels become too high the mortality risk increases.
Chart plots risk on left axis vs. serum vitamin D levels in nmol/l on right axis. Be careful when you interpret your test results. In many countries the vitamin D status is in ng/ml (including the U.S.). To convert ng/ml to nmol/l you need to multiply by 2.5.
I target 70-90 nmol/l serum levels. This can be easily achieved by vitamin D supplementation. As of 10/2018 my serum levels were 26 nmol/l and as of 8/26/2019 they were 181 nmol/l. Note that it didn’t take me 10 months of supplementation to increase D levels. It took me less than 3 months. I was taking up to 75kIU of vitamin D each week and getting perhaps 60 minutes of direct sunlight a week (sunlight also increases serum vitamin D). I made a mistake and overshot my target so now I take a dose of 2.4kIU a day and adjust as necessary to keep my serum D in the target zone.
This is a nice vitamin D calculator: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/project/dcalculator/
Important: the optimum form of vitamin D for supplementation is D3. It is also necessary to take some vitamin K along with the vitamin D (K2 is preferable).
This has recommended levels from various “authorities”.
How Much Vitamin D Should You Take?https://www.huffpost.com/entry/update-how-much-vitamin-d_b_11254120
Click to access 0008-5472.CAN-16-0687.full.pdf
https://courses.washington.edu/bonephys/opvitD.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5952478/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677029/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0170791
Prostate Cancer Adventures 