question anyone

Any idea how many I. U's a day we take in Vitamin D?

The current RDA for Vitamin D is 800IU per day.  BUT... 75% of the American population is deficient.  The Vitamin D Council (google it) has a ton of research on Vitamin D and they are in the process of having the RDA changed to 2000IU per day.  (That's what I take.)

Also, remember that we malabsorb Vitamin D -- see this diagram and notice that the two spots assigned to absorb Vitamin D within our small intestine are now bypassed, so the body can't pull Vitamin D from any food we eat.  That's why supplements are essential for us because Vitamin D in pill form is already in a form we can use.

It is important to KNOW your vitamin D lab results and adjust your supplement accordingly.  The low end of the normal range is 30.  But it's known that our body is simply turning over Vitamin D at that level - using it as fast as we're putting it in.  It's not until our lab levels get up to 50 that our body is able to store some D for a rainy day.  And all the wonderful health benefits of Vitamin D are not realized until our levels are sustained at 80 or above.  Those benefits?  Lower risk of MS, breast cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, etc. 

Vitamin D2 or D3?  Dry or oil-based?  Ideally we need Vitamin D3 in a dry formula -- which simply means it's a white tablet rather than a oil-based gel tab.  D3 is easier for the body to process than D2 (in all people, not just WLS folks) and is stored for longer in the body than D2.  Because we malabsorb fats, we want a water soluble (or dry) form of the pill, so avoid the gel tabs. 

Vitamin D Rx?  Yeah, unfortunately there's no such prescription of Vitamin D3 in dry formula .... if your doctor gave you a Rx, it's probably the little green gel-cap that is 50,000IU once per week.  That's useless to us.  Instead you need to get the Vitamin D3 50K in dry form... like this here.  In addition to the 2000IU per day, I take one of these every week just to keep my numbers around the 60 or so. 

Ok... this got really long.  LOL!  Sorry for my rambling.

Pam

This is excellent, I was hoping you would see my question. I am having breast surgery soon and my vitamin d is low...My pcp put me on 5000 IU's a day. He says it needs to come up pretty quick. I am also anemic. He said to continue my RX for iron...
We shall see..

Thanks for all of the info you provide...

This info on vitamin D is great.  It's hard to decipher all the information out there and then to tailor it to our WLS needs, so thank you for getting this together.  I will also definitely use this info!