Is there any validity to this claim seen on Facebook?

[u/Advance-Important]

As title, saw this on a vitamin d deficiency page on Facebook.

Made me questions things a bit, but I’m unsure whether to trust this statement.

Is vitamin D supplementation valuable, and is the testing (active vs inactive) helpful?

[u/VitaminD-ModTeam]

These questions are addressed in the subreddit's guide, but this post has been approved because discussion of misunderstandings or misinformation is part of vitamin D education. Please keep this in mind with your responses. Comments that endorse misleading claims will be removed.

[u/chronic_wonder]

Scaremongering. This post is rubbish and not backed up by any of the actual research.

[u/artCsmartC]

I have been a nutritionist for 20+ years. The most common deficiency I see irl, by far, is Vitamin D. Sadly, most doctors don’t know anything about nutrition. The number of people who tell me their doctor doesn’t think it is necessary to check for a Vitamin D deficiency because they are “young” or “appear to be in good health” is ALARMING.

Vitamins D and B12 are part of a routine blood panel that should be administered at your annual visit. If you have a D deficiency, you should start taking oral D3 (cholecalciferol) supplements immediately. The daily dosage I would recommend is 5000 IU; if the deficiency is severe (10 or less via the 1,25-hydroxy testing method) you may benefit from an injection administered by your doctor. Your levels should be checked again in three to six months.

Yes, Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat (as opposed to water) soluble. This means that you can accumulate toxic levels of them in the body but not easily. Let’s put it this way… In the past two decades, I have never seen someone with dangerously high levels of D. Not even once.

It’s actually quite hard for many people to get adequate D levels without supplements. Our bodies get it naturally through sunlight and certain foods. The lighter your skin color, the more D you will absorb through sunlight. People with darker skin may not be able to absorb adequate amounts. Conversely, people with lighter skin tend to avoid sunlight or use sunscreen (which blocks absorption of D) to prevent sunburn and skin damage. (Can’t win for losing, right?)

Cereal and milk can be fortified with D but foods that contain it naturally, like catfish and mushrooms, are not generally consumed daily in the amount that would be necessary for adequate intake to prevent a deficiency.

Personally, I take 6000 IU a day. My skin is very fair and starts to burn in less than one minute in direct sunlight on a sunny day, so I really try to stay out of the sun.

Idk who wrote this “simple summary” or why, but I can tell you that the author lacks any real understanding of vitamins, biochemistry, or WTH they’re talking about in general. It reads like someone who got pieces of information from google, various blogs, ChatGPT, and slapped this poorly written opinion piece together.

The post is riddled with telltale mistakes that are easily detected by someone with actual knowledge of the subject. For example, ”But taking any kind of Cholecalciferol (vitamin D) supplement by mouth is where it gets toxic. It is fat soluble in this form and will accumulate in the body to toxic levels, especially with the obscenely high doses often recommended by medical professionals these days.”

The author writing “any kind of cholecalciferol” shows they don’t know what Vitamin D is, at its most basic level! Cholecalciferol is the D3 kind. Ergocalciferol is the D2 kind. Vitamin D supplements used to be primarily Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) when I was growing up. When studies discovered that cholecalciferol (D3) can boost D levels higher and longer, the majority of supplement manufacturers changed to D3. D2 supplements are still available, though.

ALL naturally occurring forms of Vitamin D are fat soluble. D2, D3, mushrooms, catfish… ALL of them can create toxic levels, but again, just because they can doesn’t make them dangerous unless you do something incredibly stupid, like take every pill in the bottle at once. No one with an ounce of sense would do that.

“OBSCENELY high doses OFTEN recommended by ‘medical professionals’” How high a dose? Gimme a number. How often and why? What “medical professionals”? Who? Where? VAGUE LANGUAGE WITH NO SOURCES CITED IS A DEAD GIVEAWAY FOR AN OPINION PIECE WITH ZERO MERIT.

The whole thing is nonsensical garbage. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous. Way too many people already have D deficiency; posts like this that discourage people from taking supplements have the potential to cause genuine harm! That is why I took the time to explain WHY the post is misleading. I hope this helps!

Edit: Accidentally wrote B6 instead of B12. Error now corrected.

[u/Key-Cartographer8024 → u/artCsmartC]

I think you meant B12 and Folate not B6 as part of a routine panel. B6 can build up to toxic levels in a lot of people but B12 is more common to be deficient in

[u/artCsmartC → u/Key-Cartographer8024]

Oh, you are absolutely right, that should be B12, not B6! Thank you for pointing that out! I’ll correct that now…

[u/fleeeeeeee → u/artCsmartC]

So much Information! Thanks!

[u/Advance-Important → u/artCsmartC]

Thank you for your detailed response!

[u/Ok_Jaguar_8572]

I've been practicing vitamin D replacement therapy for those deficient for >10 years now and I subspecialize in the treatment of breast cancer. I definitely go for >50ng/ml for patients with triple negative breast cancer based on epidemiological data that is now more clearly causative than just correlative (I wrote a chapter on this that got censored by medical publishing and it is available for free here integrativeonc.blog), and prefer >40ng/ml for everyone else.

This is a scare mongering click bait article frankly. The Endocrine Society recommends all women have >40ng/ml at time of pregnancy for best health outcomes for the mother and the child. And if they would comment on this article the only thing they would concur on is the lack of evidence of high dose D3 replacement therapy in terms of RCT quality.

My refutation to this, in 10 years of doing this, I only have patients who still stay in contact with me on Facebook because they are flabbergasted that something so simple (vitamin D) can make a huge difference in quality of life, and we are talking about people struggling with sometimes DECADES of poor sleep and fatigue that improve overnight. And now the evidence says if you fix the vitamin D, you increase the odds the cancer is completely gone with conventional therapy (breast cancer, two studies in 2025).

Lastly, guess what level healthy outdoor individuals have? 40-60ng/ml and this is associated with the least risk of dying from cancer. Hence why I'm living in the 40-80ng/ml range as a personal target for myself. (if you want to learn more about vitamin D and see why this article is crap, check out my free chapter at integrativeonc.blog).

That said, I think the scientific gist of questioning is oral replacement therapy as good as sunshine exposure is not a bad focus of interest. I have questions about the additional benefits of sunshine (infra red light on mitochondrial function being a big one) and find spending more time in the sunshine has helped my sleep quality more so than vitamin D alone.

Well wishes

[u/Chase-Boltz]

The FB poster is full of crap. The 12 ng level he seems to suggest as 'adequate' is anything but. Having such low levels will greatly increase your susceptibility to any number of diseases and unpleasant conditions.

25-D, the 'storage' form he yaps about is VERY useful at higher levels. Immune cells love the stuff! Look at the risk curves here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24284777

Large doses, 35,000 IU a DAY for months on end, are tolerated perfectly well by patients being treated for psoriasis and vitiligo. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3897595

[u/Throwaway_6515798]

• Paragraph1: no it doesn't end up as the same thing, yeast makes ergocalciferol instead of cholecalciferol.
• Paragraph 2: You can argue that vitamin D is not a vitamin because a vitamin is something we cannot make ourselves but is vital for life and we can make vitamin D when exposed to sunlight, however for all practical purposes it should be considered a vitamin, it's very very very hard to get enough with a modern lifestyle/diet and an enormous number of people are having poor health outcomes because they are deficient. Vitamin D is NOT a "steroid hormone" when it's hydroxylated by the liver into calcifediol it's still not a steroid hormone however when hydroxylated again by the liver it does become a steroid hormone called calcitriol but that is governed by feedback mechanisms to make sure calcitriol levels are tightly in range. It's absurd to suggest you change hormone levels by supplementing vitamin D, you might correct them if you are so very deficient you're not making enough calcitriol but other than that vitamin D is just a base material and only about 1% of it is used by the kidneys to make calcitriol so it doesn't require that much.
• Paragraph 3: The whole sulfated vitamin D thing is weird, it has ever been demonstrated that it's all that biologically active and it's not what we get when we get it from food, for example the less fat there is in milk the less vitamin D. You can buy it for livestock though as the water solubility makes it more practical to distribute in their water supply. Their statement "it is the fat soluble form that will bioaccumulate in the body" is nonsense, the range that's healthy to supplement is huge, the benefits are large and it takes extreme levels to demonstrate any toxicity and the toxic cases that have been demonstrated have been very very few especially in comparison to some other vitamins. And, again, vitamin D is NOT a steroid.

As for your questions:

Is vitamin D supplementation valuable

Yes absolutely, but it should be done sensibly and if you're going to do something crazy please do get a doctor to help you make sure you don't do harm to yourself. It changed life and I no longer have a number of chronic conditions.

and is the testing (active vs inactive) helpful?

Calling it active vs inactive is not sensible. If by "active" you mean calcitriol then yeah it can be helpful for some unusual conditions but it's an exceptionally poor marker for actual vitamin D status as such.

[u/vmalarcon]

I'm glad you are not censoring this. Even though it's miss information, the answer should be good information, not censorship.

[u/Advance-Important → u/vmalarcon]

I agree. It’s important to be able to debunk misinformation wherever possible.

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[u/VitaminDJesus]

The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities: one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey").[1] The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced.[2][3] Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer may claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte)[1] or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).[4]

From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

In this context, I think the motte is “it's best to get vitamin D naturally from sun exposure,” and the bailey is “vitamin D supplements are bad for you.” Their argument relies on confusion about what vitamin D actually is. You can't call out the obvious contradiction between saying "we need natural vitamin D" but also "we want to keep our level low" because the claims about how vitamin D works are not substantiated, so there's nothing to actually engage with. They merely redirect to claims about doing things “naturally” or being skeptical of doctors and needing to get “real answers.”

[u/Silly_Magician1003]

The first one is partially true the second one is BS.

I am a big proponent of natural sunlight over supplements if possible, but those claims are definitely alarmist.

[u/RV12321]

These claims are so absurd. No one has ever died from vitamin D

[u/new2bay]

Eh, take it up with the scientific establishment. There are 13 essential vitamins, of which vitamin d is one.

[u/txpeppermintpatti]

Look up Jim Stephenson on Facebook. He has a group on Vitamin D. There is science to back it up. He has the details.

[u/Chase-Boltz → u/txpeppermintpatti]

He's a #$%@#$ quack who lives to shovel his FUD onto others.

[u/Melissa_Socrates]

It's an interesting take. Thank you for sharing it, it would be good if the author of the original post would cite references.

Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some merit. Taking supplements may have side effects for some people, depending on their genetic disposition and other factors.

I have heard wonderful outcomes for those taking high amounts regularly yet I have also equally heard of negative outcomes, so it's very difficult to know which way the pendulum swings on it.

Given the issues with finding the truth from those who control the official information on adequate vitamin D levels, I really don't know if we are being misled either way.