How Much Vitamin D Can You Absorb At Once?

Many nutritional supplementation companies have jumped on the bandwagon of increasing the time between Vitamin D doses due to the fact that it is fat-soluble and able to be stored for long periods of time. Water-soluble vitamins, such as Vitamin C, are not stored and excess is excreted via the urine. Vitamin D is stored in both your fat tissue and your liver and can be accessed as your body needs. However, since it is fat-soluble and can be stored you must be careful as to not consume too much Vitamin D and reach levels of toxicity.

Another factor to consider is with the rare Vitamin D dose of once per week, month or quarter, we see a decrease in patient compliance because it is harder to remember the occasional dose schedule.

A recent study in Clinical Endocrinology in Feb 2016, gave patients doses of 100,000 or 200,000 IU of oral cholecalciferol every 3 months and they were not capable of stabilizing 25OHD levels over the target of 75 nmol/L over the year. The researchers concluded the study with the following recommendation, “to improve the efficacy of high-dose Vitamin D therapy the interval between boluses has to be shortened instead of increasing their size.”

Aceva provides liquid Vitamin D drops that include K2 to help drive the calcium absorbed to musculoskeletal tissue instead of organ tissue and Vitamin D capsules that are 5,000IU per capsule and contain Vitamin K2 as well as all the additional cofactors necessary to convert to the active form of Vitamin D.

Reference:

Välimäki, V. V., Löyttyniemi, E., Pekkarinen, T., & Välimäki, M. J. (2016). How well are the optimal serum 25OHD concentrations reached in high‐dose intermittent vitamin D therapy? a placebo‐controlled study on comparison between 100 000 IU and 200 000 IU of oral D3 every 3 months in elderly women. Clinical endocrinology.