Increase in Vitamin D deficiency with weight and skin darkness – chart – March 2016

Probability of Vitamin D Deficiency by Body Weight and Race/Ethnicity.

J Am Board Fam Med. 2016 Mar-Apr;29(2):226-32. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2016.02.150251.
Weishaar T1, Rajan S2, Keller B2.
1From the Department of Health and Behavior Studies (TW, SR) and the Department of Human Development (BK), Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. jtw2117@columbia.edu.
2From the Department of Health and Behavior Studies (TW, SR) and the Department of Human Development (BK), Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY.

VitaminDWiki Summary

Overview Obesity and Vitamin D contains the following summary

FACT: People who are obese have less vitamin D in their blood
FACT: Obese need a higher dose of vitamin D to get to the same level of vit D
FACT: When obese people lose weight the vitamin D level in their blood increases
FACT: Adding Calcium, perhaps in the form of fortified milk, often reduces weight
FACT: 168 trials for vitamin D intervention of obesity as of Dec 2021
FACT: Less weight gain by senior women with > 30 ng of vitamin D
FACT: Dieters lost additional 5 lbs if vitamin D supplementation got them above 32 ng - RCT
FACT: Obese lost 3X more weight by adding $10 of Vitamin D
FACT: Those with darker skins were more likely to be obese Sept 2014
OBSERVATION: Low Vitamin D while pregnancy ==> more obese child and adult
OBSERVATION: Many mammals had evolved to add fat and vitamin D in the autumn
- and lose both in the Spring - unfortunately humans have forgotten to lose the fat in the Spring
SPECULATION: Low vitamin D might be one of the causes of obesity – several studies
SUGGESTION: Probably need more than 4,000 IU to lose weight if very low on vitamin D due to
risk factors such as overweight, age, dark skin, live far from equator,shut-in, etc.
Obesity category has 441 items

Normal weight Obese (50 ng = 125 nanomole)

Click here for 2014 study
Obese need 2.5X more vitamin D - click on chart for details

Overview Dark Skin and Vitamin D
Half of the US will be people of color – wonder how many will be vitamin D deficient

Skin - Dark category listing has 467 items along with related searches

Note: Skin-Dark was the 2nd of 150+ categories in VitaminDWiki

Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki

March 2016

INTRODUCTION:
While most physicians recognize that vitamin D status varies by skin color because darker skin requires more light to synthesize vitamin D than lighter skin, the importance of body weight to vitamin D status is a newer, less recognized, finding. The purpose of this study was to use nationally representative US data to determine the probability of vitamin D deficiency by body weight and skin color.

METHODS:
Using data for individuals age ≥6 years from the 2001 to 2010 cycles of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we calculated the effect of skin color, body weight, and age on vitamin D status. We determined the probability of deficiency within the normal range of body weight for 3 race/ethnicity groups at 3 target levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

RESULTS:
Darker skin colors and heavier body weights are independently and significantly associated with poorer vitamin D status. We report graphically the probability of vitamin D deficiency by body weight and skin color at vitamin D targets of 20 and 30 ng/mL.

CONCLUSION:
The effects of skin color and body weight on vitamin D status are large both statistically and clinically. Knowledge of these effects may facilitate diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency.

PMID: 26957379