"What could be more important to understand than biological energy? Thought, growth, movement, every philosophical and practical issue involves the nature of biological energy." — Raymond Peat
What do you think about topical vitamin d dissolved in mct oil? Is there something about mct oil that makes it a harmful skin carrier? It’s a lot more commonly available. I’ve also had better results with topical just using a cheap grocery store brand dissolved in sunflower oil. Would dissolving the vitamin d in mct oil in more olive oil make it a better topical?
It's a well written article, great job. It's a shame I almost died supplementing D3 [in olive oil, topically and orally] otherwise I would place an order for a few batches right now.
“If I were going to predict the anti-vitamin D people’s response to this article, I would guess that the context will immediately be ignored, followed by the addition of overwhelming complexity and obfuscation.”
Just checked Matts insta, and yep there it is.
Ray did such a thorough deconstruction of Trevor Marshalls paradigm in kitty’s podcast, and other times on One Radio, and none of the Anti – D people have ever addressed that.
I got into a debate with Jim Stephenson Jnr last year over Facebook messenger, he was trying to prove how wrong Ray is on Vit D, he was extremely incoherent, and I got to a point where I asked “have you actually read any of Ray Peats work?” and he said “no never heard of the guy until recently”. He blocked me shortly after.
It’s kind of sad to see all the carbon copy Instagram “bioeneregtic” nutrition people be like “carrot salad? - amazing. Milk? – wonderful. Thyroid – yes please. Vitamin d – POISON”
I see a fair bit of Vitamin D slander on mainstream media here in Australia, often they’ll bring up a study with how taking 1000 - 2000 iu of vitamin D made no difference in a particular health issue. I feel it gets the aspirin treatment here; Occasional good press, but mostly it's slandered.
To me it sounds like you've built a ton of assumptions upon assumptions here. And I'd say the problem with this debate is that no one seems to be able to know when to just stop.
We entered hyperreality a long time ago. False can only become more false. So it doesn't matter how much we're all gonna be going on about this, it wont change what the truth is.
When you're going to call it a vitamin, when it's really a secosteroid, already there it changes the subconscious perception of what we're dealing with.
People who are 'anti vitamin D' aren't saying don't eat animal foods and to not go out in the sun. 'We' (I think it's not helpful to be dividing people into two groups, what happened to come to your own conclusions?) are arguing for the case that supplementing is unnecessary and can in fact be dangerous.
Haven't seen anyone mention sulfur metabolism, water solubility of all the many different metabolites of this secosteroid there seem to exist vs the form you supplement with.
How do you know the body has the capacity to be handling that and not see any negative consequences whatsoever? How much are we able to store in and release from our adipose tissues? How do we know that what is assumed to be a deficiency is a proven to have a causative relationship with people's hypothyroid symptoms and not just a downstream effect?
I could keep asking questions. I haven't found any answers, nor have anyone been able to answer them for me from what I've seen.
I don't think specificity is such a high government principle in the cell as we think it is. I think Pollack is right in that it comes down to the charge environment. Beyond that - aren't we just mostly guessing still? Another example we know is the mixed serotonin agonists and antagonists, that still don't seem to be understood very well? So does 'vitamin' D completely operate in isolation from everything else in the cell that affect the environment? Seems sulfate is very important here for one.
- I also ended up with the same debilitating back pain, couldn't work nor move for about a week and pain lingered for months, which I ascribe to lack of an inflammatory response to guide my immune system. Because I experienced something similar again after being careless with my eating, only this time the pain was completely gone after two days of letting things run their course (no aspirin either). An excessive inflammatory response is prob what you want to be guarded against. But I do think the body is being given way too little credit in being able to fix stuff on its own - just like it isn't trusted that it can figure out which D metabolites it might need when and where.
We have to start with establishing how we know:
1. what is real
2. what is the truth.
Otherwise you can just go on and on forever here, approximating reality so much that you'll eat your own tail. While looking out into reality and talking to people about their experiences gives a different picture (yes, I am one of those who stopped using it in various ways and got better from it).
I don't think anyone is going to have problems as such from using a few hundred IUs, but once we move into the thousands, that's where things get more murky. And let's not forget our default state is to NOT be taking this secosteroid as a 'supplement' to begin with.
I decided to stop supplementing 1.5 years ago until I could have a final answer as to what the truth here really is. I figured 2-3 years down the line would give me all the answers I ever needed (given that I live in Scandinavia and am dark skinned).
If you're interested, maybe you could dive into Selye's Calciphylaxis https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.141725/page/n3/mode/2up - I got a copy about a year ago, but personally just haven't had the time and as time passed, I lost interest in it because I started seeing improvements in symptoms after stopping.
'Poe imagines the situation in which a sailor, who has gone out on a fishing expedition, finds himself caught in a huge maelstrom or whirlpool. He sees that his boat will be sucked down into this thing. He begins to study the action of the ström, and observes that some things disappear and some things reappear. By studying those things that reappear and attaching himself to one of them, he saves himself. Pattern recognition in the midst of a huge, overwhelming, destructive force is the way out of the maelstrom. The huge vortices of energy created by our media present us with similar possibilities of evasion of consequences of destruction. By studying the patterns of the effects of this huge vortex of energy in which we are involved, it may be possible to program a strategy of evasion and survival. (...)'
- Marshall McLuhan
At the end of the day all we have to go by is pattern recognition. If it isn't consistent is isn't true. This debate is a great example of dichotomania. And we need to realize we are dealing in the abstract as well.
I had some issues I attribute to vitamin D as lanolin (even topical). So I'm a bit cautious about supplementing. I try to get sunlight preferably. Although I think it's antibacterial function is useful.
It might be worth contemplating if a lot of vitamin D's benefits are down to it's opposition to vitamin A. For example, D suppresses PTH, good so far, but is this effect just down to it countering this one?
D3 supplementation changed my life: I went from one respiratory infection after another with the doctors saying they would only worsen with age. No physician ever suggested a test to determine my Vitamin D levels. Years later, respiratory infections are a thing of the past.
Danny this article is a fantastic contribution to the discussion on supplementation in general and d3 pros and cons. I learned a lot and was lead to read it by all the online debate. Especially Morally Robins Matt Blackburn’s fear projections. I speculate that we all get driven into rabbit holes and the path seems so obvious to ourselves. Ive come to be here via the Weston Price Tom Cowan mindset.
Anyway I love what you do and hope you do this great work for a long time. I will end with this thought… a person can know ten thousand trivial facts about how the movie Star Wars was made. That doesn’t mean they know anything about the story. If people want to get healthy they should start understanding their own story.
" it’s simply something that helped me gain a level of health that I didn’t have before." Would you go into a bit more detail here? How specifically did d3 supplementation manifest in your health?
I am reposting Jim Stephenson Jr's "critique" of this, he might now have shared it here to not appear argumentative, I dont know. I hope he doesnt mind. I think it's important to stop the D insanity. It might help clear some confusion and uncertainty.
You champion a "bioenergetic worldview" but focus on 2, maybe 3, forms of D when there are over 50. Its like an allegory of the cave sorta perspective.
I love when people are like you just take everything Peat says as the gospel. Can’t possibly be bc I listened to and read his views and they are more convincing than anti D. Even though someone’s personality or lack of doesn’t make what someone says true or not, that Jim dude, gosh what a jerk.
Do you have any thoughts on what an ideal vitamin A to D ratio is? Also, do you have any thoughts on what Chris Kresser has written?
If your 25(OH)D level is:
less than 20 ng/mL: you likely need some combination of UV exposure, cod liver oil, and a vitamin D supplement
20 to 35 ng/mL: get your PTH tested. If PTH is adequately suppressed (less than 30 pg/mL), supplementing is probably unnecessary.
35 to 50 ng/mL: continue your current diet and lifestyle for maintaining adequate vitamin D
greater than 50 ng/mL: try reducing your vitamin D supplements, and make sure you are getting adequate amounts of the other fat-soluble vitamins to protect against toxicity
Get retested!
Check your levels after three to four months to see if you have achieved or maintained adequate levels of vitamin D. If not, adjust your diet, lifestyle, or supplements accordingly and check again in another three to four months.
Get sunlight or UV exposure as your primary form of vitamin D.
Reap the many benefits of sunlight beyond just subcutaneous production of vitamin D, and reduce your chance of achieving toxic levels. Spend about 15 to 30 minutes, or about half the time it takes your skin to turn pink, in direct sunlight. Sunscreens not only block production of vitamin D, but also all of the other beneficial photoproducts produced in the skin in response to UVB.
Mind your micronutrients to protect against toxicity.
Try cod liver oil as a good source of vitamins A and D and high-vitamin butter oil or pastured butter and ghee for vitamin K. Sweet potatoes, bananas, plantains, and avocados all contain significant amounts of potassium. Consider supplementing with magnesium as it is very difficult to get adequate amounts of this micronutrient from food due to soil depletion."
In my work with men, I've found that some men respond better to vitamin D3 under the tongue than in pill form. I've used transdermal application for many supplements as well and it works quite well.
You are 100% right that there are a lot of really cruddy supplements out there, but that vitamin D can make a huge difference in health for many people.
What do you think about topical vitamin d dissolved in mct oil? Is there something about mct oil that makes it a harmful skin carrier? It’s a lot more commonly available. I’ve also had better results with topical just using a cheap grocery store brand dissolved in sunflower oil. Would dissolving the vitamin d in mct oil in more olive oil make it a better topical?
Do you think vitamin d to to the navel offers anything special over just spreading over lower legs?
Danny I forgot to mention for what it’s worth that this was one of the most well constructed articles I’ve ever read. Keep it up.
Danny what an amazing article. There should be more people like you out there helping us all to better understand our health.
It's a well written article, great job. It's a shame I almost died supplementing D3 [in olive oil, topically and orally] otherwise I would place an order for a few batches right now.
“If I were going to predict the anti-vitamin D people’s response to this article, I would guess that the context will immediately be ignored, followed by the addition of overwhelming complexity and obfuscation.”
Just checked Matts insta, and yep there it is.
Ray did such a thorough deconstruction of Trevor Marshalls paradigm in kitty’s podcast, and other times on One Radio, and none of the Anti – D people have ever addressed that.
I got into a debate with Jim Stephenson Jnr last year over Facebook messenger, he was trying to prove how wrong Ray is on Vit D, he was extremely incoherent, and I got to a point where I asked “have you actually read any of Ray Peats work?” and he said “no never heard of the guy until recently”. He blocked me shortly after.
It’s kind of sad to see all the carbon copy Instagram “bioeneregtic” nutrition people be like “carrot salad? - amazing. Milk? – wonderful. Thyroid – yes please. Vitamin d – POISON”
I see a fair bit of Vitamin D slander on mainstream media here in Australia, often they’ll bring up a study with how taking 1000 - 2000 iu of vitamin D made no difference in a particular health issue. I feel it gets the aspirin treatment here; Occasional good press, but mostly it's slandered.
To me it sounds like you've built a ton of assumptions upon assumptions here. And I'd say the problem with this debate is that no one seems to be able to know when to just stop.
We entered hyperreality a long time ago. False can only become more false. So it doesn't matter how much we're all gonna be going on about this, it wont change what the truth is.
When you're going to call it a vitamin, when it's really a secosteroid, already there it changes the subconscious perception of what we're dealing with.
People who are 'anti vitamin D' aren't saying don't eat animal foods and to not go out in the sun. 'We' (I think it's not helpful to be dividing people into two groups, what happened to come to your own conclusions?) are arguing for the case that supplementing is unnecessary and can in fact be dangerous.
Haven't seen anyone mention sulfur metabolism, water solubility of all the many different metabolites of this secosteroid there seem to exist vs the form you supplement with.
How do you know the body has the capacity to be handling that and not see any negative consequences whatsoever? How much are we able to store in and release from our adipose tissues? How do we know that what is assumed to be a deficiency is a proven to have a causative relationship with people's hypothyroid symptoms and not just a downstream effect?
I could keep asking questions. I haven't found any answers, nor have anyone been able to answer them for me from what I've seen.
I don't think specificity is such a high government principle in the cell as we think it is. I think Pollack is right in that it comes down to the charge environment. Beyond that - aren't we just mostly guessing still? Another example we know is the mixed serotonin agonists and antagonists, that still don't seem to be understood very well? So does 'vitamin' D completely operate in isolation from everything else in the cell that affect the environment? Seems sulfate is very important here for one.
https://medium.com/@JosephGiacona/the-current-vitamin-d-craze-is-not-harmless-39f8fb3f8960
- I also ended up with the same debilitating back pain, couldn't work nor move for about a week and pain lingered for months, which I ascribe to lack of an inflammatory response to guide my immune system. Because I experienced something similar again after being careless with my eating, only this time the pain was completely gone after two days of letting things run their course (no aspirin either). An excessive inflammatory response is prob what you want to be guarded against. But I do think the body is being given way too little credit in being able to fix stuff on its own - just like it isn't trusted that it can figure out which D metabolites it might need when and where.
We have to start with establishing how we know:
1. what is real
2. what is the truth.
Otherwise you can just go on and on forever here, approximating reality so much that you'll eat your own tail. While looking out into reality and talking to people about their experiences gives a different picture (yes, I am one of those who stopped using it in various ways and got better from it).
I don't think anyone is going to have problems as such from using a few hundred IUs, but once we move into the thousands, that's where things get more murky. And let's not forget our default state is to NOT be taking this secosteroid as a 'supplement' to begin with.
I decided to stop supplementing 1.5 years ago until I could have a final answer as to what the truth here really is. I figured 2-3 years down the line would give me all the answers I ever needed (given that I live in Scandinavia and am dark skinned).
If you're interested, maybe you could dive into Selye's Calciphylaxis https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.141725/page/n3/mode/2up - I got a copy about a year ago, but personally just haven't had the time and as time passed, I lost interest in it because I started seeing improvements in symptoms after stopping.
'Poe imagines the situation in which a sailor, who has gone out on a fishing expedition, finds himself caught in a huge maelstrom or whirlpool. He sees that his boat will be sucked down into this thing. He begins to study the action of the ström, and observes that some things disappear and some things reappear. By studying those things that reappear and attaching himself to one of them, he saves himself. Pattern recognition in the midst of a huge, overwhelming, destructive force is the way out of the maelstrom. The huge vortices of energy created by our media present us with similar possibilities of evasion of consequences of destruction. By studying the patterns of the effects of this huge vortex of energy in which we are involved, it may be possible to program a strategy of evasion and survival. (...)'
- Marshall McLuhan
At the end of the day all we have to go by is pattern recognition. If it isn't consistent is isn't true. This debate is a great example of dichotomania. And we need to realize we are dealing in the abstract as well.
I had some issues I attribute to vitamin D as lanolin (even topical). So I'm a bit cautious about supplementing. I try to get sunlight preferably. Although I think it's antibacterial function is useful.
It might be worth contemplating if a lot of vitamin D's benefits are down to it's opposition to vitamin A. For example, D suppresses PTH, good so far, but is this effect just down to it countering this one?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/408151/
In which case what's better, more D or less A?
Like how omega 3 will counter some of the more immediate toxic effects of omega 6 oils?
D3 supplementation changed my life: I went from one respiratory infection after another with the doctors saying they would only worsen with age. No physician ever suggested a test to determine my Vitamin D levels. Years later, respiratory infections are a thing of the past.
Danny this article is a fantastic contribution to the discussion on supplementation in general and d3 pros and cons. I learned a lot and was lead to read it by all the online debate. Especially Morally Robins Matt Blackburn’s fear projections. I speculate that we all get driven into rabbit holes and the path seems so obvious to ourselves. Ive come to be here via the Weston Price Tom Cowan mindset.
Anyway I love what you do and hope you do this great work for a long time. I will end with this thought… a person can know ten thousand trivial facts about how the movie Star Wars was made. That doesn’t mean they know anything about the story. If people want to get healthy they should start understanding their own story.
Thanks so much Danny!
" it’s simply something that helped me gain a level of health that I didn’t have before." Would you go into a bit more detail here? How specifically did d3 supplementation manifest in your health?
I am reposting Jim Stephenson Jr's "critique" of this, he might now have shared it here to not appear argumentative, I dont know. I hope he doesnt mind. I think it's important to stop the D insanity. It might help clear some confusion and uncertainty.
You champion a "bioenergetic worldview" but focus on 2, maybe 3, forms of D when there are over 50. Its like an allegory of the cave sorta perspective.
https://docdro.id/kio52te (its a .docx file but you can view it on this site)
I love when people are like you just take everything Peat says as the gospel. Can’t possibly be bc I listened to and read his views and they are more convincing than anti D. Even though someone’s personality or lack of doesn’t make what someone says true or not, that Jim dude, gosh what a jerk.
Do you have any thoughts on what an ideal vitamin A to D ratio is? Also, do you have any thoughts on what Chris Kresser has written?
If your 25(OH)D level is:
less than 20 ng/mL: you likely need some combination of UV exposure, cod liver oil, and a vitamin D supplement
20 to 35 ng/mL: get your PTH tested. If PTH is adequately suppressed (less than 30 pg/mL), supplementing is probably unnecessary.
35 to 50 ng/mL: continue your current diet and lifestyle for maintaining adequate vitamin D
greater than 50 ng/mL: try reducing your vitamin D supplements, and make sure you are getting adequate amounts of the other fat-soluble vitamins to protect against toxicity
Get retested!
Check your levels after three to four months to see if you have achieved or maintained adequate levels of vitamin D. If not, adjust your diet, lifestyle, or supplements accordingly and check again in another three to four months.
Get sunlight or UV exposure as your primary form of vitamin D.
Reap the many benefits of sunlight beyond just subcutaneous production of vitamin D, and reduce your chance of achieving toxic levels. Spend about 15 to 30 minutes, or about half the time it takes your skin to turn pink, in direct sunlight. Sunscreens not only block production of vitamin D, but also all of the other beneficial photoproducts produced in the skin in response to UVB.
Mind your micronutrients to protect against toxicity.
Try cod liver oil as a good source of vitamins A and D and high-vitamin butter oil or pastured butter and ghee for vitamin K. Sweet potatoes, bananas, plantains, and avocados all contain significant amounts of potassium. Consider supplementing with magnesium as it is very difficult to get adequate amounts of this micronutrient from food due to soil depletion."
In my work with men, I've found that some men respond better to vitamin D3 under the tongue than in pill form. I've used transdermal application for many supplements as well and it works quite well.
You are 100% right that there are a lot of really cruddy supplements out there, but that vitamin D can make a huge difference in health for many people.
https://mattcook.substack.com/p/load-up-on-this-vitamin-to-cut-your