Recent vitamin D and fish oil studies are misleading.

Recent studies reporting that vitamin D did not prevent cancer and heart attack, and that fish oil did not reduce heart attack, do not apply to patients taking these supplements the way that we recommend. 

In the vitamin D cancer study, vitamin D was given in pulses: 50,000 IU once a week, which causes the body to degrade the vitamin D, greatly reducing its benefit.  Daily 5,000 IU vitamin D does not cause degradation.  Very strong correlations have been found between higher vitamin D levels and less cancer.  We need better prospective studies.

In the vitamin D heart attack study, 2,000 IU a day of vitamin D was used, which I found to change low blood levels very little.  One patient with a very low vitamin D level of 12, still had a level far below normal, two years later, taking 2,000 IU a day.

In the fish oil study, the fish oil pill was mostly EPA, with very little of the DHA that correlates with cleaner artery walls.  We recommend DHA at doses enough to raise your blood level to that found in patients with the cleaner artery walls.  We measure blood levels with mass spec, for high accuracy.  Ironically, the same week, a new EPA fish oil product used at very high doses (4 grams a day, which is over 4 times what we recommend in DHA) achieved a 28% reduction in heart attack, and the FDA approved this as a medication based on the data.  There was no excess in bleeding found at the high dose.

Both vitamin D and fish oil have very strong associations with less cancer and heart attack.  For example, a 2018 meta-analysis found a 33% less chance of death, in patient who already have colon cancer, if they had normal blood levels of vitamin D, compared to low levels.  The recent prospective studies using inadequate or incorrect dosing are not conclusive.

We are changing our electronic medical record to one with a much better patient portal and messaging, by February 1, 2019.  Until then, we have opened up texting to enable you to text us.  This will NOT be monitored in real time, so please do not send urgent medical needs.  Call instead, for those.  After hours, page the doctor on call (on our phone message).

Thank you very much for your interest in evidence-based, individually patient-verified medicine.