How fast can Vitamin D levels drop?

by Shriram
(Chicago, IL)

I was deficient in Vitamin D Nov 2011. The 25(OH) Hydroxy test revealed it was only 5.6 ng/ml.

My doc advised me to take supplements (4000iU) and after a year I retested. The levels are normal again - about 45 ng/ml.

My question is - If I miss/stop taking supplements, how fast can the levels drop for a 40 yr old healthy male? Lets say I dont take it for 2 weeks, will it go back to deficient levels? or does it go down gradually?

I m planning to travel out of the country for 4 weeks and dont want to carry my supplements with me.

Thank you

Comments for How fast can Vitamin D levels drop?

Click here to add your own comments

Take 4 weeks at once
by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!

Hi Shiram,

Now that your levels are right where you want them, my suggestion if I were in your position would be to take your 4 weeks at once. Vitamin D absorbs in your fat and then decreases slowly. I take a months worth at a time and never take it daily.

If you only have 4000 IU pills and don't want to take so many at once, you can take two weeks worth before you leave spreading them out over the few days until you leave, and then take another 14 pills over a few days when you get back.

Good thinking ahead of time like that. Vitamin D is nice that way. I don't like having to remember it everyday and that's the best way to keep you from having to remember. You can also 'make up' missed days by doubling the dose the next day.

This is perfectly safe, and a common way to treat children with rickets and the elderly is an injection of 500,000 IU's all at once. And yes, I wrote that correctly as Five Hundred Thousand all at once in children with severe deficiency.

Vitamin D is very safe.

Kerri Knox, RN

Click here to add your own comments

Return to Vitamin D Blood Levels.

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

Click on the HTML link code below.
Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.

Search this Site

Custom Search

Free Vitamin D Fact Sheet by Getting
My Newsletter