An arrhythmia is a problem with the speed or rhythm of the heartbeat. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common type of arrhythmia. The cause is a disorder in the heart's electrical system....Page last updated on 03 February 2012 Topic last reviewed 18 January 2012AF can lead to an increased risk of stroke. In many patients, it can also cause chest pain, heart attack, or heart failure.
N.B. Watch your units! Some studies reported 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations in nanomoles per liter, while others reported results in nanograms per milliliter.
P.S. I just saw this story in the hard copy version of the January 2012 issue of Family Practice News.
Important FYI ping!
OK.. my first thought was... Vitamin D makes you lie?
lol
I thought maybe Eric Holders intake of milk caused him to lie like a rug.
I believe that at least two of you have made comments about vitamin D supplementation.
Pardon my ignorance - what is considered an ‘overdose’ of Vitamin D??
My SO is a chronic/recurrent A-FIB sufferer, and has been taking 5000IU of D3 for the past year - could this be of concern to her??
But it is pretty difficult to get your blood level up to 100.
I supplement to get to 60 and it takes 14,000 iu to get it there. But since getting to 60 instead of 24, I stopped getting all colds and flus even while pregnant. No matter what I’m exposed to, I simply don’t catch it. Having enough D keeps cancer away too.
I occasionally have exercised induced A fibs and I am an elite athlete type. It is pretty scary stuff because they often show up months or years apart. I wasn’t as worried until I read about the stroke risk. Scary stuff. I am back to the cardiologist. Anyone else deal with exercise induced or just general A fibs?
In their “doctor” segment on FNC today, he said some people are really over-medicating themselves and that high levels of D-3 are associated with all sorts of major problems. You may be able to find reference to what he had to say at FNC web site. It was quite interesting.
A fib is caused by magnesium deficiency. So are low levels of vit D. Some people are taking very high doses of D because they can’t get their levels up but their levels won’t go up until they start taking the right kind and right amount of mag.
These people that produce these pseudo studies do not have a Soul.
It’s almost impossible for anyone to get close to taking too much vitamin D. Your body can make far, far more of it than you’d ever normally take in vitamin form. Further the body takes in vitamin D inefficiently as with many vitamins so you’re not going to absorb 100% of the vitamin D you’d be intaking anyway.
The author fails to not that the vast, vast moajority of problems people have associated with vitamin D is being DEFICIENT in vitamin D, not having too much.
This basically is a horsepucky article.
Wisconsin residents: this is not what you think! (WI-IL joke)
Frankly, I don’t find this report at all persuasive. There are numerous benefits to taking vitamin D, and this article does not persuade me of the contrary.
The effect being investigated is said to be “extremely unusual, occurring in just 291 of the 132,000 people (0.2%) included in the study.” Zero point two percent. I would imagine that that is less than the margin of error.
Not only that, but they never explain what “excessive” means. I take about 4,000 i.u. daily in the winter, and I doubt that that is excessive, although it is above the recommended dosage—which was based on research from ten or twenty years ago, and very cautious as well. And I gather from some of the comments that excessive is probably, well, quite a lot more than that.
Sounds suspiciously like a Big Pharma scare story to me.
bfl
Some folks are born with the characteristic "square heart". Others can develop it through intense exercise ~ e.g. the sort of training needed for cross-country skiing or regular marathon runs.
If you have an extra sinus (spare current carrying nerve to the heart), it can begin firing when you don't want it to, and that will interfere with the motor sequence leading to fibrillation.
Reading through the Scandinavian (Swedish) research in the Skolt (a Sa'ami tribe of about 500 people living in Finland), this particular heart structure is clearly associated with success at cross country reindeer "herding", living outdoors all the time, winter and summer, and frequent heavy labor during periods of intense cold.
It could also enable you to breath easier than other, more Tropical humans, in very cold air simply because greater use of the atrial chambers allows you to pump more blood through the lungs ~ and that allows you to breath in less cold air ~ to maintain the same oxygenpressure ~ and removal of CO2.
Not a big thing of course but in that climate getting by with fewer breaths probably has a survival advantage.
There are a cluster of genetically driven conditions associated with this including not having enzymes to metabolise alcohol (a tough one, eh), anomalous heme production (leading to an anemia called pernicious anemia), and so forth. That is, if you have one such condition, the odds are good that you have at least one, or all, of the others.
Now does that mean you have a Sa'ami ancestor? In general, probably, but they've been mixing into the general population in Europe for over 1,000 years! Watch those guys swimming in Antarctic waters ~ they probably have square hearts ~ and could develop troublesome arrhythmias in the future ~ or maybe not. My grandfather had the problem, my father had it, I don't! I have associates who know of this problem back over many generations, with many deaths, and yet others don't have any deaths at all.
This report/study probably needs to have the Sa'ami background filtered out. Otherwise readers may draw some quite erroneous conclusions.
My opinion would be that the a fib people are taking calcium with the d3 supplementation. Most Americans probably have too much calcium in their diets before any supplementation of calcium. It may be possible to upload too calcium with the assistance of d3.
My opinion would be that the a fib people are taking calcium with the d3 supplementation. Most Americans probably have too much calcium in their diets before any supplementation of calcium. It may be possible to upload too calcium with the assistance of d3.
I didn’t see anything in the article giving a ‘safe’ level to take. That’s a BIG omission.
As to Utah having a big Vit D deficiency - the whole northern hemisphere does - duh - as does the Antarctica end of the world, while the sunny lands don’t.
The sun delivers Vit D through UVB rays - which are not around in northern winters. It’d be a bit uncomfortable to sunbath in Jan and Feb anyway ;o)
People who suffer from S.A.D. = depression - “Log Cabin Fever” in the winter do so because their Vit D levels drops.
I take 6,000 IU’s a day - OF VIT D3 - in winter.
Also, the majority of people who are afflicted with MS are in the colder climates - lack of Vit D is implicated in eating away the myelin sheath that protects nerves like a covered electric wire.
I have a granddaughter newly diagnosed - her neurosurgeon encourages her to take Vit D3 - it’s Vit D3 we should take - not Vit D. There IS a difference.
And yet, "The measurement numbers documented the extent of the vitamin D deficiency problem, with 38,000 of the 132,000 people measured (29%) having a blood level below 20 ng/dL. This group with vitamin D deficiency showed significantly elevated prevalence rates of diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, heart failure, and depression, compared with people in the designated "normal" vitamin D range of 41-60 ng/dL." I would think Vitamin D deficiency would be contributing to dangerous medical conditions more than would overdose.
I have been slowly increasing my dosage of D3 with blood tests, and had gotten up to 6000IU/day. Unbeknownst to me, my wife started buying the 2000IU/pill rather than the 1000IU/pill stuff, so at some point I actually started taking ~12,000IU/day.
The reason I started upping the dose was that EVERY YEAR for probably the last ten, I have had 3-4 (or more) bad colds, often going bacterial in my sinuses.
This year, I have had ONE "attempted cold" which died out with a bit of extra rest. That is, until I found out about "the switcheroo". However, on dropping my dosage back to 6000IU/day, I promptly caught a cold.