There is no shortage of ailments that vitamin D has been claimed to prevent or cure – various types of cancers, heart disease, COVID-19, diabetes, an assortment of autoimmune conditions, just to name a few. What is it about this micronutrient that leads people to behold it as a panacea? In this episode, we sift through what we know about the biology of vitamin D, along with what happens when you don’t have enough of it, in an attempt to discern what might be overhype and what might be underhype when it comes to vitamin D and health claims. And there certainly is ample reason for excitement over this micronutrient, as its deep, deep evolutionary history reveals just how many biological processes in which vitamin D is intimately and vitally involved. The consequences of vitamin D deficiency form a large part of its human history, as soaring rates of rickets during the Industrial Revolution drew the interest of researchers intent on pinpointing the cause of this disease. As is typical for this podcast, the more we know, the more questions we have, like “who decided what counts as deficiency?”, “how much vitamin D should people be getting?”, and “what is vitamin D really telling us?”. Tune in for plenty of sunshine, cod liver oil, and drama over vitamin D.
| History | Biology |
| Allentoft, Morten E., et al. “Population genomics of bronze age Eurasia.” Nature 522.7555 (2015): 167-172. | Amrein, K., Scherkl, M., Hoffmann, M., Neuwersch-Sommeregger, S., Köstenberger, M., Tmava Berisha, A., Martucci, G., Pilz, S. and Malle, O., 2020. Vitamin D deficiency 2.0: an update on the current status worldwide. European journal of clinical nutrition, 74(11), pp.1498-1513. |
| Bouillon, Roger, and Tatsuo Suda. “Vitamin D: calcium and bone homeostasis during evolution.” BoneKEy reports 3 (2014). | Holick, M.F., 2009. Vitamin D status: measurement, interpretation, and clinical application. Annals of epidemiology, 19(2), pp.73-78. |
| Carlberg, Carsten. “Vitamin D in the Context of Evolution.” Nutrients 14.15 (2022): 3018. | Elder, C.J. and Bishop, N.J., 2014. Rickets. The Lancet, 383(9929), pp.1665-1676.Update in Vitamin D, 2010 John Adams and Martin Hewison |
| Chick, Harriette. “Study of rickets in Vienna 1919–1922.” Medical history 20.1 (1976): 41-51. | Adams, J.S. and Hewison, M., 2010. Update in vitamin D. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 95(2), pp.471-478. |
| Chun, Rene F., John S. Adams, and Martin Hewison. “Back to the future: a new look at ‘old’vitamin D.” The Journal of endocrinology 198.2 (2008): 261. | Holick, M.F., 2007. Vitamin D deficiency. New England journal of medicine, 357(3), pp.266-281. |
| DeLuca, H. F. “Vitamin D: A new look at an old vitamin.” Nutrition reviews 29.8 (1971): 179-181. | Lips, P., 2006. Vitamin D physiology. Progress in biophysics and molecular biology, 92(1), pp.4-8. |
| DeLuca, Hector F. “Evolution of our understanding of vitamin D.” Nutrition reviews 66.suppl_2 (2008): S73-S87. | Pearce, S.H. and Cheetham, T.D., 2010. Diagnosis and management of vitamin D deficiency. Bmj, 340. |
| DeLuca, Hector F. “History of the discovery of vitamin D and its active metabolites.” BoneKEy reports 3 (2014). | Zhang, Y., Fang, F., Tang, J., Jia, L., Feng, Y., Xu, P. and Faramand, A., 2019. Association between vitamin D supplementation and mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis. Bmj, 366. |
| DeLuca, Hector F. “Vitamin D: historical overview.” Vitamins & Hormones 100 (2016): 1-20. | Cummings, S.R. and Rosen, C., 2022. VITAL findings—A decisive verdict on vitamin D supplementation. New England Journal of Medicine, 387(4), pp.368-370. |
| Goldblatt, Harry, and Katharine Marjorie Soames. “A study of rats on a normal diet irradiated daily by the mercury vapour quartz lamp or kept in darkness.” Biochemical Journal 17.2 (1923): 294. | Manson, J.E., Bassuk, S.S., Buring, J.E. and VITAL Research Group, 2020. Principal results of the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) and updated meta-analyses of relevant vitamin D trials. The Journal of steroid biochemistry and molecular biology, 198, p.105522. |
| Guy, Ruth A. “The history of cod liver oil as a remedy.” American Journal of Diseases of Children 26.2 (1923): 112-116. | LeBoff, M.S., Chou, S.H., Ratliff, K.A., Cook, N.R., Khurana, B., Kim, E., Cawthon, P.M., Bauer, D.C., Black, D., Gallagher, J.C. and Lee, I.M., 2022. Supplemental vitamin D and incident fractures in midlife and older adults. New England Journal of Medicine. |
| Harvey, Nicholas C., and Cyrus Cooper. “Vitamin D: some perspective please.” BMJ 345 (2012). | Van Ballegooijen, A.J., Pilz, S., Tomaschitz, A., Grübler, M.R. and Verheyen, N., 2017. The synergistic interplay between vitamins D and K for bone and cardiovascular health: a narrative review. International journal of endocrinology, 2017. *conclusions in this paper are not strong* |
| Holick, Michael F. “Evolution and function of vitamin D.” Vitamin D analogs in cancer prevention and therapy (2003): 3-28. | |
| Holick, Michael F. “Vitamin D: A millennium perspective.” Journal of cellular biochemistry 88.2 (2003): 296-307. | |
| Mellanby, E. “The part played by an accessory factor in the production of experimental rickets, Physiol.” Proc. Physiol. Soc. Vol. 52. 1918. | |
| Norman, Anthony W. “The history of the discovery of vitamin D and its daughter steroid hormone.” Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 61.3 (2012): 199-206. | |
| O’Riordan, Jeffrey LH, and Olav LM Bijvoet. “Rickets before the discovery of vitamin D.” BoneKEy reports 3 (2014). | |
| Rajakumar, Kumaravel. “Vitamin D, cod-liver oil, sunlight, and rickets: a historical perspective.” Pediatrics 112.2 (2003): e132-e135. | |
| Swan, Patricia B. “Cornelia Kennedy (1881–1969).” The Journal of Nutrition 124.4 (1994): 455-460. | |
| Wheeler, Benjamin J., et al. “A brief history of nutritional rickets.” Frontiers in Endocrinology 10 (2019): 795. | |
| Wolf, George. “The discovery of vitamin D: the contribution of Adolf Windaus.” The Journal of nutrition 134.6 (2004): 1299-1302. |
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