People who take too much of this vitamin are more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke.
Both low and high levels of vitamin D can put people’s lives in jeopardy by increasing cardiovascular disease, stroke, and heart attack risk.
Danish researchers found a connection between high vitamin D levels and heart disease, stroke, and myocardial infarction death rate.
Mounting evidence also suggests that low vitamin D status can increase the risk of osteoporosis, inflammatory diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, depression, and certain cancers.
Professor Peter Schwarz, the study’s senior author, said:
“We have studied the level of vitamin D in 247,574 Danes, and so far, it constitutes the world’s largest basis for this type of study.
We have also analysed their mortality rate over a seven-year period after taking the initial blood sample, and in that time 16,645 patients had died.
Furthermore, we have looked at the connection between their deaths and their levels of vitamin D.”
They found an association between death rates and too low or too high levels of vitamin D in the blood.
Professor Schwarz said:
“If your vitamin D level is below 50 or over 100 nanomol per litre, there is an greater connection to deaths.
We have looked at what caused the death of patients, and when numbers are above 100, it appears that there is an increased risk of dying from a stroke or a coronary.
In other words, levels of vitamin D should not be too low, but neither should they be too high.
Levels should be somewhere in between 50 and 100 nanomol per litre, and our study indicates that 70 is the most preferable level.”
This would mean that excessive intake of vitamin D is harmful to our health and so make us think twice before taking any vitamin or mineral supplements.
Professor Schwarz said:
“These are very important results, because there is such great focus on eating vitamin D.
We should use this information to ask ourselves whether or not we should continue to eat vitamins and nutritional supplements as if they were sweets.
You shouldn’t simply up the dose to feel better.
We should only consume such vitamins in close coordination with our GP.”
The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (Durup et al., 2015).
