I’ve always been told that D2 is inferior to D3, but now I’m not so sure. I do like mushrooms 🍄🟫. I was in Costco the other day and saw a display at the end of the aisle(that’s why they put them there) for a D3&K2 supplement that was plant based. That caught my attention as I thought D3 was from animal sources. Looking at the label it said it was made from lichens. Puzzling as lichens aren’t animals(nor vegetables). As all supplements, natural or otherwise, are manufactured using some chemical process, I guess anything is possible. Any thoughts?
Lichen is an intriguing life-form - a symbiotic partnership of fungi and algae! Lichen-based vitamin D3 supplements have been available for a number of years. The D3 is completely identical to that obtained from lanolin, which is the source of most D3 supplements. What I find most fascinating is that across multiple phyla, organisms have developed the capacity to harness UVB to perform various metabolic functions, by synthesising compounds that are very closely chemically related. Yet the challenges faced by fungi and animals are very different!
Just curious --- If dietary sources of Vitamin D are beneficial, why wouldn't supplemental Vitamin D be as well? Since Vitamin D is both made by our bodies and in traditionally consumed food sources, it would seem to that both routes are important to our health. I see the supplement people pushing supplements and the natural people pushing sunlight, but I don't see any serious attempts to determine the optimal level of Vitamin D from both routes combined, and instead, each side knocking the other. (Absolutely not aimed at you or these posts, which I have enjoyed.)
The 5,600 iu. per gram of oyster mushrooms is a higher amount than any supplement and would seem dangerous. I love mushrooms and one gram would be a miniscule amount to consume for me. Could one accidently poison themselves by irradiating their mushrooms? The average person would have no way to determine the amount of Vitamin D formed and I would think it would be highly variable.
I'm not firmly of the opinion that vitamin D supplements are dangerous or unnecessary (although I do think they have been recommended to a much wider segment of the population than could be expected to benefit from them, as is the case with pretty much every supplement and drug). I am concerned about the manufacturing process, and what is in those capsules besides vitamin D. It's very clear that humans have been making vitamin D via for our skin for our entire evolutionary history, and we've been consuming it via fungi for a considerable period of time too. I'm inherently predisposed to favour methods of obtaining nutrients which we're clearly adapted to as a species, because of the implied safety of such methods.
Regarding ergocalciferol in mushrooms, those quantities referred to dried weight of deliberately UVB-irradiated mushrooms. The fresh weight would be at least 10 times the dried weight. I searched the literature to see if any cases of vitamin D intoxication from irradiated mushroom intake had been reported, and could not find any. You should still err on the side of caution though, and treat UVB-irradiated mushrooms as if they were a medicine - at least until there has been more research on the subject!
Wonderful! Very helpful guidance Robyn - thank you! Coming into spring where I live so time to get out my bathing suit and into the back at midday! (Briefly ; ) )
You betcha!! You'll find it has many benefits besides the stimulation of vitamin D formation. Most modern humans are essentially starved of sunlight, and it's making us sick and miserable.
1 - No UV-B or supplementation: 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels far below the 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L the immune system needs to function properly.
2 - Special UV-B lamp exposure on ideally white skin most or all year round: potentially attain 50 ng/mL 25-hydroxyvitamin D, but waste a lot of time and electricity, damage the skin and - over decades - greatly increase the risk of skin cancer.
3 - Supplement with vitamin D2 (there's far too little vitamin D2 in foods of any kind, fortified or not). This is less effective and so less healthy than supplementing properly with vitamin D3.
4 - Supplementing vitamin D3 properly - as recommended by Prof. Wimalawansa https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#00-how-much, while avoiding unnecessary UV-B skin exposure. This is the only healthy approach. To avoid ingesting mainstream vitamin D3, which is made from 7-dehydrocholesterol derived from wool fat (about 1 gram of vitamin D3 is needed every 22 years) then you can pay significantly more and use vitamin D3 extracted directly from marine algae, such as: https://www.vitamind3v.com.
Miyauchi and Nakajima 2016 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/php.12651 state that for people with white skin, the amount of vitamin D3 produced in their skin in a single day requires no more than 1/3 of the amount of UV-B which would cause the skin to become pink. With repeated exposure, the skin would tan and so require more UV-B to produce both the maximal amount of vitamin D3 in a day and to become pink (sunburnt).
"Fair-skinned people need only 4-9 minutes (depending on latitude) of midday summer sun, to produce the equivalent of a 1000 IU oral dose of cholecalciferol." This is meaningless since it does not specify the area or skin exposed, the angle of incidence or the effects of sun-tanning which inevitably increases with such exposure.
The 2006 article you cite: https://www.wellesu.com/10.1111/j.1751-1097.2006.tb09833.x, assumes that 0.025 milligrams (25 micrograms = 1000 IU) is the "dose recommended to provide all the possible health benefits of vitamin D". This ignores body weight variation and is still widely believed by many doctors. However, the real intake of vitamin D3 required for full immune system responses, for a 70 kg 154 lb non-obese person is around 5 times this.
The same UV-B which transforms 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D3 cholecalciferol also damages DNA and so raises the risk of skin cancer. There's no way around this. However, the risks of skin cancer are reduced significantly by attaining good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels all year round - and there are likely to be other physical and mental health benefits from being outdoors and of exposing the skin to sunlight without approaching the total amount of UV in any day which leads to sunburn.
The safest way to use UV-B light to generate vitamin D3 in the skin would be to use a narrow range of wavelengths concentrated on those which are most effective at breaking the ring in the 7-dehydrocholesterol.
There is no practical way of filtering broadband light (from plasmas, very hot filaments or mercury vapour lamps) into such a narrow spectrum. (Ordinary low-pressure mercury vapor lamps produce multiple narrow bands, none of them ideal for creating vitamin D3. Industrial production involves high pressure, high temperature - 800C - lamps which broadens the narrow spectral lines: https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/B978-0-12-381978-9.10006-X.)
As I wrote in comments to previous articles, health is not achieved by "optimising activation of the precursors into calcitriol", since, with the exception of the kidneys' role in regulating calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism, all the other functions of calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D) are as intracrine or paracrine agents in the intracrine (inside each cell) and paracrine (to nearby cells, typically of different types) *signaling* systems. These systems are not turned on all the time. They are only activated in a single cell when that cell detects a particular cell-type-specific condition.
So we don't want to encourage the cell to produce calcitriol all the time. Ideally it would produce none when the intracrine or paracrine signaling system is not activated. This has nothing to do with hormonal signaling.
We do want to ensure that when the intracrine or paracrine signaling system is activated, that the cell produces a full amount of calcitriol. This can be achieved, as far as anyone knows, for all cells in the body, of all the relevant types, by ensuring that there is at least 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L = 1 part in 20,000,000) 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the bloodstream. This is not vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). It is a different compound, with a different role. This is what is measured in so-called "vitamin D" blood tests.
To attain this, after several months, a 70 kg non-obese person who is not getting a lot of UV-B skin exposure needs to supplement about 126 to 161 micrograms (4900 to 6300 IU) vitamin D3 a day, on average. This is the the recommendation of New Jersey based Professor of Medicine Sunil Wimalawansa: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#00-how-much.
Thanks too for the link to Durrant et al. 2022 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.790444/full which showed in an in-vitro assay that the D3 version of calcitriol affected more genes than the D2 version. This is not surprising since D3 is the natural form and the D2 one, from vitamin D2, is unnatural, since humans have never ingested significant amounts of vitamin D2. I was surprised to read that the D2 version of calcitriol activated somewhat different genes. I had never heard of this - a further argument for supplementing with vitamin D3 instead of vitamin D2.
You wrote: "you can't go wrong by going out in the sun to get your cholecalciferol production, and getting a regular hit of ergocalciferol by eating delicious mushrooms". You certainly can go wrong with this, because UV-B damages DNA and is hard or impossible to obtain all year round in sufficient quantities even if we had the time and inclination to be outdoors without much clothing. D2 is an unnatural and less effective form of vitamin D than D3.
There is a general principle that it is better to gain nutrients from natural foods in a well-balanced diet (whatever that might mean) than by ingesting manufactured supplements. However, this doesn't apply to vitamin D3 since food sources can only make up a few percent of the vitamin D3 we need to be healthy.
50 ng/ml/125nmol/L is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer mortality and all-cause mortality. You should not be issuing advice that could cause people serious harm. It's unbelievably irresponsible. If you were a health practitioner, this dangerous advice would be reportable.
UVB exposure for the brief periods of time required to make adequate cholecalciferol is NOT harmful, and in fact, in areas with low solar intensity, sunbathing is associated with a decreased risk of melanoma mortality and all cause mortality, as the Melanoma In Southern Sweden cohort demonstrated (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251). Sensible sun exposure provides many more benefits than cholecalciferol synthesis, and cannot be substituted for by popping a vitamin D pill.
You clearly didn't even bother reading the section on inducing vitamin D2 synthesis in mushrooms; your comment that no food contains sufficient vitamin D2 to contribute to vitamin D nutriture is ill-informed.
And as you've done repeatedly in your comments, you completely ignore the substantial genetic variation between individuals in vitamin D binding protein avidity and VDR activity. Your approach is reductionist and entirely lacking in comprehension of humans as complex systems.
Is it both UV’s that cause the skin to tan? Or one or the other?
It's UVA that causes tanning.
I’ve always been told that D2 is inferior to D3, but now I’m not so sure. I do like mushrooms 🍄🟫. I was in Costco the other day and saw a display at the end of the aisle(that’s why they put them there) for a D3&K2 supplement that was plant based. That caught my attention as I thought D3 was from animal sources. Looking at the label it said it was made from lichens. Puzzling as lichens aren’t animals(nor vegetables). As all supplements, natural or otherwise, are manufactured using some chemical process, I guess anything is possible. Any thoughts?
Lichen is an intriguing life-form - a symbiotic partnership of fungi and algae! Lichen-based vitamin D3 supplements have been available for a number of years. The D3 is completely identical to that obtained from lanolin, which is the source of most D3 supplements. What I find most fascinating is that across multiple phyla, organisms have developed the capacity to harness UVB to perform various metabolic functions, by synthesising compounds that are very closely chemically related. Yet the challenges faced by fungi and animals are very different!
Just curious --- If dietary sources of Vitamin D are beneficial, why wouldn't supplemental Vitamin D be as well? Since Vitamin D is both made by our bodies and in traditionally consumed food sources, it would seem to that both routes are important to our health. I see the supplement people pushing supplements and the natural people pushing sunlight, but I don't see any serious attempts to determine the optimal level of Vitamin D from both routes combined, and instead, each side knocking the other. (Absolutely not aimed at you or these posts, which I have enjoyed.)
The 5,600 iu. per gram of oyster mushrooms is a higher amount than any supplement and would seem dangerous. I love mushrooms and one gram would be a miniscule amount to consume for me. Could one accidently poison themselves by irradiating their mushrooms? The average person would have no way to determine the amount of Vitamin D formed and I would think it would be highly variable.
I'm not firmly of the opinion that vitamin D supplements are dangerous or unnecessary (although I do think they have been recommended to a much wider segment of the population than could be expected to benefit from them, as is the case with pretty much every supplement and drug). I am concerned about the manufacturing process, and what is in those capsules besides vitamin D. It's very clear that humans have been making vitamin D via for our skin for our entire evolutionary history, and we've been consuming it via fungi for a considerable period of time too. I'm inherently predisposed to favour methods of obtaining nutrients which we're clearly adapted to as a species, because of the implied safety of such methods.
Regarding ergocalciferol in mushrooms, those quantities referred to dried weight of deliberately UVB-irradiated mushrooms. The fresh weight would be at least 10 times the dried weight. I searched the literature to see if any cases of vitamin D intoxication from irradiated mushroom intake had been reported, and could not find any. You should still err on the side of caution though, and treat UVB-irradiated mushrooms as if they were a medicine - at least until there has been more research on the subject!
P.S. See Part 6 of the series; vitamin D2 has a much lower toxicity risk than D3.
Wonderful! Very helpful guidance Robyn - thank you! Coming into spring where I live so time to get out my bathing suit and into the back at midday! (Briefly ; ) )
You betcha!! You'll find it has many benefits besides the stimulation of vitamin D formation. Most modern humans are essentially starved of sunlight, and it's making us sick and miserable.
Can't wait. I have mistakenly, seriously starved myself of sunlight for DECADES, so it will be very very interesting.
The choice is between:
1 - No UV-B or supplementation: 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels far below the 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L the immune system needs to function properly.
2 - Special UV-B lamp exposure on ideally white skin most or all year round: potentially attain 50 ng/mL 25-hydroxyvitamin D, but waste a lot of time and electricity, damage the skin and - over decades - greatly increase the risk of skin cancer.
3 - Supplement with vitamin D2 (there's far too little vitamin D2 in foods of any kind, fortified or not). This is less effective and so less healthy than supplementing properly with vitamin D3.
4 - Supplementing vitamin D3 properly - as recommended by Prof. Wimalawansa https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#00-how-much, while avoiding unnecessary UV-B skin exposure. This is the only healthy approach. To avoid ingesting mainstream vitamin D3, which is made from 7-dehydrocholesterol derived from wool fat (about 1 gram of vitamin D3 is needed every 22 years) then you can pay significantly more and use vitamin D3 extracted directly from marine algae, such as: https://www.vitamind3v.com.
Miyauchi and Nakajima 2016 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/php.12651 state that for people with white skin, the amount of vitamin D3 produced in their skin in a single day requires no more than 1/3 of the amount of UV-B which would cause the skin to become pink. With repeated exposure, the skin would tan and so require more UV-B to produce both the maximal amount of vitamin D3 in a day and to become pink (sunburnt).
"Fair-skinned people need only 4-9 minutes (depending on latitude) of midday summer sun, to produce the equivalent of a 1000 IU oral dose of cholecalciferol." This is meaningless since it does not specify the area or skin exposed, the angle of incidence or the effects of sun-tanning which inevitably increases with such exposure.
The 2006 article you cite: https://www.wellesu.com/10.1111/j.1751-1097.2006.tb09833.x, assumes that 0.025 milligrams (25 micrograms = 1000 IU) is the "dose recommended to provide all the possible health benefits of vitamin D". This ignores body weight variation and is still widely believed by many doctors. However, the real intake of vitamin D3 required for full immune system responses, for a 70 kg 154 lb non-obese person is around 5 times this.
The same UV-B which transforms 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D3 cholecalciferol also damages DNA and so raises the risk of skin cancer. There's no way around this. However, the risks of skin cancer are reduced significantly by attaining good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels all year round - and there are likely to be other physical and mental health benefits from being outdoors and of exposing the skin to sunlight without approaching the total amount of UV in any day which leads to sunburn.
The safest way to use UV-B light to generate vitamin D3 in the skin would be to use a narrow range of wavelengths concentrated on those which are most effective at breaking the ring in the 7-dehydrocholesterol.
There were some experiments with this in 2017 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11362-2 using light emitting diodes which generate a relatively narrow spectrum ca. 293 nanometres, but these were experimental LEDs from a now-defunct company RayVio. Tonight I found that a Chinese company does produce high powered LEDs at 290, 293 and 295 nm: https://www.houkem.com.cn/high-optical-power-110mw-293nm-295nm-uvb-led-5watt-uv-led-295nm-290nm-293nm-for-vitamin-d.html 5 watt power consumption and 0.1 watts of UV-B light output. Dozens to hundreds would be needed to expose large amounts of skin, with eye protection.
There is no practical way of filtering broadband light (from plasmas, very hot filaments or mercury vapour lamps) into such a narrow spectrum. (Ordinary low-pressure mercury vapor lamps produce multiple narrow bands, none of them ideal for creating vitamin D3. Industrial production involves high pressure, high temperature - 800C - lamps which broadens the narrow spectral lines: https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/B978-0-12-381978-9.10006-X.)
As I wrote in comments to previous articles, health is not achieved by "optimising activation of the precursors into calcitriol", since, with the exception of the kidneys' role in regulating calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism, all the other functions of calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D) are as intracrine or paracrine agents in the intracrine (inside each cell) and paracrine (to nearby cells, typically of different types) *signaling* systems. These systems are not turned on all the time. They are only activated in a single cell when that cell detects a particular cell-type-specific condition.
So we don't want to encourage the cell to produce calcitriol all the time. Ideally it would produce none when the intracrine or paracrine signaling system is not activated. This has nothing to do with hormonal signaling.
We do want to ensure that when the intracrine or paracrine signaling system is activated, that the cell produces a full amount of calcitriol. This can be achieved, as far as anyone knows, for all cells in the body, of all the relevant types, by ensuring that there is at least 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L = 1 part in 20,000,000) 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the bloodstream. This is not vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). It is a different compound, with a different role. This is what is measured in so-called "vitamin D" blood tests.
To attain this, after several months, a 70 kg non-obese person who is not getting a lot of UV-B skin exposure needs to supplement about 126 to 161 micrograms (4900 to 6300 IU) vitamin D3 a day, on average. This is the the recommendation of New Jersey based Professor of Medicine Sunil Wimalawansa: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#00-how-much.
Thanks for the link to Nasim et al. 2019 https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.4103/ijmbs.ijmbs_8_19 - yet another article showing that vitamin D3 is superior to vitamin D2.
Thanks too for the link to Durrant et al. 2022 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.790444/full which showed in an in-vitro assay that the D3 version of calcitriol affected more genes than the D2 version. This is not surprising since D3 is the natural form and the D2 one, from vitamin D2, is unnatural, since humans have never ingested significant amounts of vitamin D2. I was surprised to read that the D2 version of calcitriol activated somewhat different genes. I had never heard of this - a further argument for supplementing with vitamin D3 instead of vitamin D2.
You wrote: "you can't go wrong by going out in the sun to get your cholecalciferol production, and getting a regular hit of ergocalciferol by eating delicious mushrooms". You certainly can go wrong with this, because UV-B damages DNA and is hard or impossible to obtain all year round in sufficient quantities even if we had the time and inclination to be outdoors without much clothing. D2 is an unnatural and less effective form of vitamin D than D3.
There is a general principle that it is better to gain nutrients from natural foods in a well-balanced diet (whatever that might mean) than by ingesting manufactured supplements. However, this doesn't apply to vitamin D3 since food sources can only make up a few percent of the vitamin D3 we need to be healthy.
50 ng/ml/125nmol/L is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer mortality and all-cause mortality. You should not be issuing advice that could cause people serious harm. It's unbelievably irresponsible. If you were a health practitioner, this dangerous advice would be reportable.
UVB exposure for the brief periods of time required to make adequate cholecalciferol is NOT harmful, and in fact, in areas with low solar intensity, sunbathing is associated with a decreased risk of melanoma mortality and all cause mortality, as the Melanoma In Southern Sweden cohort demonstrated (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251). Sensible sun exposure provides many more benefits than cholecalciferol synthesis, and cannot be substituted for by popping a vitamin D pill.
You clearly didn't even bother reading the section on inducing vitamin D2 synthesis in mushrooms; your comment that no food contains sufficient vitamin D2 to contribute to vitamin D nutriture is ill-informed.
And as you've done repeatedly in your comments, you completely ignore the substantial genetic variation between individuals in vitamin D binding protein avidity and VDR activity. Your approach is reductionist and entirely lacking in comprehension of humans as complex systems.