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Dr. Mercola, Experts Shocked by New Vitamin D Dosage Recommendations
The good news: the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has finally realized that people need more vitamin D, the “sunshine nutrient” with powerful health-promoting properties.
The bad news: IOM’s recommended vitamin D dosage is far from enough to make a significant impact on your health, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola and leading vitamin D experts.
The IOM is a non-profit, non-government organization that provides national advice on biomedical science, medicine, and health. Its latest recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin D are as follows:
• Infants 0-12 months = 0 international units (IU)/day
• Children and teenagers 1-18 years = 600 IU/day
• Adults 19-50 years = 600 IU/day
• Adults 51-70 years = 600 IU/day
• Adults over 70 = 800 IU/day
• Pregnant women = 600 IU/day
These recommended doses are way below the RDA of vitamin D suggested by Dr. Mercola and the Vitamin D Council – 5,000 IU for adults and pregnant women.
The only vitamin D benefit that the FNB documented in its latest report was bone health improvement.
Dr. Mercola points out that it completely disregarded the numerous studies that, over the last few years, have revealed that vitamin D deficiency is associated with illnesses like cancer, heart disease, influenza, liver disease, and respiratory infections.
Dosage Recommendation Made by Vitamin D “Experts”
Carole Baggerly, founder of Grassroots Health (a non-profit organization that promotes vitamin D awareness) is disturbed by the fact that the current IOM vitamin D panel had little experience on vitamin D research – and none at the epidemiological level. IOM made a critical decision that will influence doctors, government agencies, the media, and the public.
According to Baggerly, the panel carefully selected the type of data they wanted to review and excluded a wide variety of important data. “They did not look at epidemiological data at all, of which there are decades of research substantiating that people die of all kinds of diseases that are impacted by vitamin D,” she says.
Glenville Jones, PhD, one of the panel members who determined the new vitamin D guidelines, is quoted as saying that most people “probably don’t have vitamin D deficiency.” He believes that “there has been an exaggeration of the public’s interest in vitamin D deficiency.”
Jones is an advisor for Cytochroma, a pharmaceutical company that is developing a synthetic drug version of vitamin D.
The Vitamin D Council reports that the FNB consulted with 15 vitamin D experts — including Creighton University’s Prof. Robert Heaney and Harvard’s Prof. Walter Willett — but decided to suppress their opinions. The council has filed a federal Freedom of Information request to the IOM’s FNB for the release of these 15 reports.
Dr. Mercola recommends age-appropriate vitamin D doses. Before taking any vitamin D supplement, determine your current level using 25(OH)D blood test, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D test. Take this test routinely to avoid overdose.
For more information on vitamin D supplementation, visit vitamind.mercola.com.
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