Greetings, it's Eric Bakker, the naturopath.
The question today is can Vitamin D cause constipation?
Well it can, but only in extremely rare cases.
You'd have to take an incredible amount of Vitamin D to get serious side effects from
it.
In all the years I've worked with patients I've never seen a serious side effect on Vitamin
D. Even when I work with people up to 25,000 international units per day, three or four
times that dose, 75,000 units per day for weeks on end, months on end for treating acne.
And I've not seen any bad effects come from Vitamin D.
However, if you're drinking a bottle of whiskey a day and you're taking 5000 units of Vitamin
D can be seriously bad 'cause you're impairing your liver function.
So if you're doing dumb things like taking lots of Tylenol, paracetamol, ibuprofen, Valium,
Paxil, if you're taking all these drugs like candy and taking Vitamin D, that can be a
problem.
And that's what I see some patients do is they'll take five to six medications per day
and then they'll pop a few Vitamin C or D tablets and they'll think, "Oh I'll just clean
my liver out from all this toxicity."
But you can't do that.
You need to see someone like me or a doctor or someone who understands the interaction
of drugs and supplements otherwise you're going to be in hot water.
Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin and you've got four of them.
You've got Vitamin A, D, E and K. They're all fat soluble.
Now healthy people like me, they don't usually have any problems at all with fat soluble
vitamins 'cause they don't really do crazy things like drink tons of alcohol or smoke
or do dumb things like that.
They don't take handfuls of drugs all the time so their liver's pretty clean and tidy.
It can easily process the fat soluble vitamin.
The digestive system is in good condition.
It can break the fat soluble down properly and absorb it and excrete the waste products.
That's how the body's meant to operate.
When the body's poisoned, however, with takeaway foods, lots of Coca-Cola and alcohol, when
you pay lip service to diet and eat whatever, then you could have some problems with Vitamin
D.
This is why doctors unfortunately always zoom in on Vitamin D saying it's toxic, it's bad.
They'll give out antibiotics on this hand and on that hand they'll take the Vitamin
D from you saying it's toxic so it's pretty crazy isn't it?
So Vitamin D can cause constipation in some people if it's taken in excessive amounts.
We're talking 40,000 international units.
I've seen people take 5-600,000 international units a day.
Don't laugh I've seen it happen.
These were people that were very sick with cancer and they thought well I'll just really
mega, mega boost on Vitamin D. A very silly thing to do.
When you megadose on Vitamin D, it can cause hypercalcemia in the body so too much calcium
buildup and that can affect your kidneys or your eyes or your heart or your brain.
It can lead to a lot of different health problems.
You can also get muscle problems.
You can even get seizures from high dose Vitamin D.
So you need to be cautious with Vitamin D that you don't go excessive.
Here's what you do.
Get a blood test done.
Check your level of Vitamin D. You want to have it between 70 to 100 is a good reading
for Vitamin D. Many people I see are 10, 20, 30 and the doctor says it's perfectly fine.
When I started testing patients for Vitamin D 25 years ago, they weren't doing Vitamin
D testing.
They didn't even think it was relevant to test for Vitamin D back then.
And even now they're reluctant to test for it.
The day will come when a test for all minerals and vitamins in the body of every human being
and medicine hopefully will working on the premise of building up the health with minerals
and vitamins rather than poisoning it with Tylenol and Paxil and crap like that.
So what's the solution?
The solution is get your Vitamin D level tested particularly going into wintertime.
Make sure that your levels are well over 50 hopefully 70.
And if they're not that level, you want to start taking 5000 international units of Vitamin
D3.
Make sure you get the D3, the cholecalciferol, the D3.
So you take one capsule of that per day with a main meal and after about I would say eight
weeks, 12 weeks, get the level tested again.
Make sure that your level is up around the 70 mark.
That could potentially hold off a lot of chronic diseases.
It's well worth doing.
But yes it can cause constipation.
If you take crazy amounts, anything can cause constipation.
So I hope that answers the question.
Thanks for tuning in.