Vitamin D and Fat Accumulation

I should say, seasonal fat accumulation. Are we the only species who's skin is able to produce vitamin D by exposure to sunlight? I doubt it. I think there are many species who rely on sunlight, or more specifically, sunlight exposure fluctuation as a signal to pack on fat for winter. I read a few times now that humans somehow pack on more fat around winter and shed more fat around summer. Or at least there is a tendency to do so.

As sunlight exposure lengthens or shortens according to seasons, we produce more or less vitamin D as a result. More in the summer, less in the winter. It's only an association but there is another association that I want to look at which would strengthen the argument in favor of vitamin D supplementation for fat loss.

Since the '70s, we've been advised to use sunscreen and to avoid the sun if possible. We've also been advised to avoid eating so much fat. We've grown fatter since then and continue to grow fatter still. Carbohydrates drive insulin drives fat accumulation. But this is only the primary cause of fat accumulation. The lack of vitamin D from the use of sunscreen and from the avoidance of sunlight would exacerbate this fat accumulation by simulating a permanent winter with respect to vitamin D production. At least if the tendency and therefore the mechanism of vitamin D with regard to fat accumulation is real.

I supplement with vitamin D for a while now. I got convinced by many posts here by Hutchinson on the subject of vitamin D and its benefits. I can't say that it helps fat loss to any extent because I haven't measured so precisely to tell. I supplement not for fat loss but for other reasons related to general health. However based on the associations outlined above it is my belief that it is helping to some degree with shedding fat. How much I couldn't say.

I'm just throwing this out there for discussion. I haven't made up my mind yet but I'm pretty sure I got something there.

Vitamin D is the most common deficiency and which has been linked to autism, bi-polar disorder and other maladies. We are suffering needlessly because we fear the sun. In reality skin cancer has probably increased due to the lack of vitamin D that sunscreens create. Especially for people of color who have been told that it is just as important for us to avoid the sun. Now I have learned that we, people of color, need to get more than 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight recommended to fairer skinned people. My entire family quit using sunscreen which includes my husband who is white and whom, I believe has Asperger's and it may be helping him in that aspect.

I'm sure supplementation helps in some respects with cancer or bone density for instance. Good of you to have taken to getting more of it.

Do you think vitamin D has any bearing on fat accumulation?

LeVac, it is hard to say but I do know that difficulty in losing weight can be caused from vitamin D deficiency. The reason it is hard for me to say is because age can also be blamed. I am having difficulty in weightloss, I am at the age that could cause me to gain. I also began taking vitamin D and my weight has been coming off but I don't think that I can pinpoint the cause to vitamin D supplementation.

So far I haven't seen vit. D3 helping weight loss. I'm taking 10,000 iu. In fact, I've had a recent surge in weight gain (though I stick to my diet like crazy) but I think it is due to hormonal changes.

Well your logic seems pretty solid.

I currently take a supplement calcium/magnesium/vit. D which gives me 200 iu a day. Is that anywhere close to enough? Being fair skinned ("lucky" Irish) I have been very wary of the sun for years and rarely venture out doors except when I have to do yardwork.

I think you are dead on with this one.

As for the fat accumulation....don't know. Taking D has helped me in many ways, but it hasn't sped up or slowed down my weight loss. My body comp, however, has continued to change despite a lack of significant weight loss.

I DO totally believe the vitamin D theory of autism AND I AM SO FREAKING PISSED OFF ABOUT THIS I WANT TO HURT PEOPLE!!!!!

All my son needed was some sun without sun screen and his life would have been so different.

Dr Davis of the Heartscanblog finds the average Wisconsin Woman requires 5000iu/daily to attain and maintain a 25(OH)D status around 60-70ng 150-175nmol/l. Men at the Wisconsin Latitude (43N) seem to require 6000iu/daily D3.

While Dr Davis suggests this level is best for heart disease prevention but there are other reasons if you look
At this chart

One of the vitamin D experts, Dr. Holick, The UV Advantage, gave vitamin D to people in Boston and found that one of the effects was weight loss. He then did a study of vitamin D effects on the obese and found that

Decreased bioavailability of vitamin D in obesity1,2,3
Jacobo Wortsman, Lois Y Matsuoka, Tai C Chen, Zhiren Lu and Michael F Holick http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/72/3/690

Vitamin D Status and Response to Vitamin D3 in Obese vs. Non-obese African American Children
Kumaravel Rajakumar1, John D Fernstrom2,3,4, Michael F Holick5,6, Janine E Janosky7 and Susan L Greenspan8
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v...oby200723a.html

Vitamin D3 in fat tissue
Miriam Blum Æ Gregory Dolnikowski Æ Elias Seyoum Æ
Susan S. Harris Æ Sarah L. Booth Æ James Peterson Æ
Edward Saltzman Æ Bess Dawson-Hughes
Endocr (2008) 33:90–94
DOI 10.1007/s12020-008-9051-4

Zuleikaa, that first paper by Wortsman et al concludes an association of obesity and D insufficiency. An association can run both ways. This means obesity by itself can cause D insufficiency, or D insufficiency can cause obesity, or it can mean that vitamin D insufficiency and obesity are caused by the same agent. Still, there is an association which continues to support the hypothesis.

The second paper also suggests the cause of D deficiency to be sequestration of D in adipose tissue. It's only a suggestion but since D can only be absorbed and/or metabolized with fat, locking fat in adipose tissue would prevent this fat from being used to metabolized whatever D is available otherwise. This would put the cause-effect opposite of what I hypothesized in my first post. Still, it's only a suggestion of the cause based on an association, not evidence of the cause.

I'm still leaning toward D deficiency as an exacerbating factor in fat accumulation.

Thanks for the links.

I don't if 200 units per day is enough. I take between 5k and 15k units per day for a while now. And I'm wondering if it's enough too. Most days I take 10k units. I haven't run tests for it so I can't say if it's enough. Maybe I should. I tan easily so I think that I can reach D saturation quickly but that's just a guess.

Vitamin D, glucose, insulin, and insulin sensitivity.This review examines available evidence of links between abnormalities of glucose and insulin metabolism and vitamin D deficiency. Possible mechanisms of action of vitamin D include stimulation of insulin secretion and effects on insulin sensitivity. Sun exposure usually implies greater outdoor physical activity, which in itself may have beneficial effects on insulin sensitivity, unrelated to serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations. The observed associations in humans among vitamin D, insulin, and glucose metabolism have not yet been confirmed by intervention studies and, hence, a causal association has not been established. But the review does detail many different ways Vitamin D3 status could affect the situation.

Baseline serum 25-hydroxy vitamin d is predictive of future glycemic status and insulin resistance: the Medical Research Council Ely Prospective Study 1990-2000.
It seems common sense to me that as our bodies evolved to live naked outdoors with a natural 25(OH)D around 60ng 150nmol/l eating a non refined naturally low carbohydrate diet they are likely to work best under those circumstances.

Our fat sources would in paleo times have been much higher not only in omega 3's but also higher in Vitamin D.

The lard we eat today from industrially housed pork won't have been basking in the sun but in previous generations our pigs would have been housed in pens with access to sunlight.

Hutchinson, the second abstract you posted concludes with



It's still only an association but it continues to support the hypothesis.

Wifey, I am so glad that you are mad. I am mad too. My DH's niece is autistic ( I believe that he is in the spectrum ) and my SIL is bi-polar. I believe that my husband's family has a vitamin D deficiency that is masked by autism and depression. It is odd that products are advertised now as containing vitamin D. You can read about vitamin D in magazines but the information in these articles and the amount of this hormone in mag. articles are useless. I am African American and I thought that I was doing my family good, by insisting that they use sunscreen to block the sun from their skin. The stronger the SPF factor the betterright...wrong! Now be aware, at a school where I work, there is an entire family from Somalia where the kids are autistic. Do you realize that black people have a natural SPF of 500!!!

We follow the media like gods. The media led us to believe that immunizations lead to the increased incidents of autism while it was just a lack of sunlight that was the true culprit. Ugh, I'm getting sleepy. I hope that what I wrote made sense.

It really is an issue that because everybody is so hyperactive about any mention of race bringing a danger of racism, that things such as race are seldom addressed in information about health on any level, even though it's obvious there are differences. There is definitely a huge difference in specific regards to SPF, Vitamin D etc. based on skin pigmentation and it appears, even based on where one grows up (eg the S.A.D. effect that impacts people who grew up in sunny climes more than people of the same genetic base who grew up elsewhere).

There are other peripheral issues that relate to obesity and race as well. For example, Jeffrey Fieldman, head Geneticist at Rockefeller U., was pointing out once that the "increase in obesity" is definitely very skewed along racial lines. For example native Americans are going to be larger and more of them obese than Asians. That might seem like a fashion statement until you consider the government deciding some children should be removed from homes and surgically intervened with for obesity. So it becomes a terrible racial issue at that point, where races XYZ are more likely to lose their kids for example.

It also means that because there is no delineation of this difference -- in other words, the public and in particular those groups of people -- don't realize that it is a much bigger health issue -- then there is less pressure to change things that affect it. For example my best local friend is native and they get a version of food assistance that is almost entirely processed white sugar/flour based products. They don't have much money, and they need that assistance, but it mostly means tons of flour and pastas and so on... the government 'helping' with the very foods most likely to gradually kill them. (Slightly slower than smallpox, but...) Even a seemingly small thing like (a) recognizing that carbohydrates are a problem and (b) recognizing that American natives at least most tribes appear to be far more sensitive to this and badly affected by it, could result in them actually requesting they get 'food' as opposed to mostly-stuff-that-poisons-us, which would instantly cost vasssssstly more money. So then it's a political issue as well as a health issue as well as a race issue. Gah!

I'm 14 nationalities so I never know what might affect me. I'm light olive in tone and pass for a white girl except in a crowd of white girls heh, but grew up in coastal southern california so I think that adds to the issues. When I moved to Seattle I was so depressed I was nearly suicidal until a friend sent me some full spectrum lights and I put them in my desk lamp and used them all the time. I started taking Vitamin D a couple months ago but I take it irregularly, 5000iu when I do, once in awhile 2 pills, sometimes none. I feel ambivalent about dosage because there is so much conflicting info.

(There is a whole alternative health segment that relates to the light spectrum which is really very interesting, and which I actually saw results with, with one of my cats some years ago, I mean in a clear enough way that I don't think it was just hope or superstition. I find this interesting because fluorescent lights and especially these new lights that for the sake of brightness remove the yellow spectrum, I think is bad health news.)