Vitamin D Feedback Loop?

Does a Vitamin D supplement hurt natural production?

Great question! Let's dive in.

Human biology is full of feedback loops. When the production of something gets low or high, it signals the production mechanisms to speed up or slow down, maintaining a balance.

The body is smart, and we should do our best not to mess with nature. There is always a concern that an intervention could disrupt a natural feedback loop.

Here's a great example. Your thyroid produces thyroid hormone. When your body senses that thyroid hormone levels are low, it stimulates the thyroid to make more. If it senses that thyroid levels are too high, it tells the thyroid to chill out. This is a feedback loop. Sometimes, when artificial thyroid hormone in the form of a medication is

Does Vitamin D have a feedback loop?Dr. Brandan Lee

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introduced, it can actually inhibit the thyroid from making its own thyroid hormone. It's as if messing with the natural feedback loop backfires and disincentivises the thyroid from doing its job.

With all that background, the question becomes: "Can taking a Vitamin D supplement cause the body to stop producing it's own Vitamin D"? It's a great question, and it's worth discussing.

The short answer to this question is "no". I have not seen any evidence that a Vitamin D supplement will disincentivize the body from making Vitamin D.

To go a little deeper, here are some points to consider:

1. Healthy sunshine is by far the best way to get your Vitamin D. This is the way nature intended, and to question the brilliance of nature is foolish. Asking this question highlights the importance of healthy sun exposure and the need to make it a non-negotiable priority.

2. Vitamin D production from sun exposure actually happens independently of whether you take a supplement or not. When you take a Vitamin D3 supplement, your kidneys turn the "supplement form" of Vitamin D into the active form. Sunshine interacts with a form of cholesterol in your skin to create Vitamin D, and this happens regardless of whether you're taking a Vitamin D supplement or not.

While there are feedback loops related to Vitamin D and Vitamin D production, we can see that the production of Vitamin D from sun exposure does not operate on a feedback loop like the above example of thyroid hormone. The importance of healthy sun exposure can not be overstated, but until you master healthy sun exposure to create optimal Vitamin D levels, it appears that you can use a quality Vitamin D supplement without the risk of disincentivising your body from continuing to make it's own.