When my twenty year old son called from his dorm and said he was feeling so sick and achy that he was coming home, I knew he had the flu.
Just a few days before my son called, I happened to read a Pubmed abstract referencing the ‘vitamin D hammer’, a term and dosage that were unfamiliar to me. In it, the doctor writes, “A colleague of mine and I have introduced vitamin D at doses that have achieved greater than 100 nmol/L in most of our patients for the past number of years, and we now see very few patients in our clinics with the flu or influenzalike illness. In those patients who do have influenza, we have treated them with the vitamin D hammer, as coined by my colleague. This is a 1-time 50 000 IU dose of vitamin D3 or 10 000 IU 3 times daily for 2 to 3 days. The results are dramatic, with complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours. One-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely and have never been shown to be toxic.8 .”
(I’m including a link in case you’d like to see where this came from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/?fbclid=IwAR1-aVcZEeMysIWUgOy0v1cMzb91L0-K74K5P12rtWRmitxM9wpZ-aIK3vs )
Of course I knew about the importance of vitamin D for the flu since years ago when there was the swine flu panic I did some research on that. And I’m very, very comfortable and experienced with megadoses of vitamin C. But megadoses of vitamin D? Not something I had done.
I went straight to the pharmacy to pick up some vitamin D so I could have some ready for my son as soon as he got home. I was told the only options in Israel were for 400 iu or 1000 iu; I usually buy 5000 and 10,000 iu per capsule online. So I got more than one bottle.
Five minutes after he got home, I gave my son 25,000 iu and gave my other kids 5000 iu for prevention.Three hours later he took another 25,000 iu before going to sleep.
He was really sick and I expected he would be in for a rough night, and sure enough, he was. But by the morning, he was feeling much better; within 24 hours, the achiness and fever were completely gone (though he felt tired). Within 48 hours he was completely back to himself.
BOOM! The hammer was a winner for us!
It’s not coincidental that the flu comes around seasonally when it’s cold and dark, and most of us aren’t getting much sunlight (sunlight being the natural source of vitamin D). I read somewhere that the flu could be called a vitamin D deficiency; if you aren’t deficient in vitamin D, you aren’t going to catch the flu.
The day before this I was in the doctor’s waiting room with someone whose two children were just over the flu, and she told me how hard it had been for her to have nothing to do but let them suffer and wait for them to get better. That’s such a hard feeling for a parent. It’s so empowering when you know how to speed up a child’s recovery from an illness!
The amount I gave my son was for an adult, and I was wondering what a child’s dose would be. The formula I found to work out a weight based dosage is this: multiply a person’s weight (in kilograms) and then multiply that by 1000 to get each person’s dose. This dose would be the amount to take daily for only three days, then stop.
(Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, unlike vitamin C, so megadoses are only for when sick. This isn’t an amount to take daily for an ongoing period!)
I love finding easy and effective ways to deal with seasonal illness! My son was certainly grateful.
Avivah
Your calculation based on weight comes to far more than the numbers you gave above. According to your calculation, a 50-kg adult would get 100,000 IU and an 80-kg adult would get 160,000 IU. But the article you quoted said they give an adult 30,000 IU for 2-3 days or 50,000 once. Sounds like it should be more like 400 IU/kg.
Thanks for commenting, Debby! I intended to write 1000 iu per kg (when I originally wrote it down for myself, I wrote 2000 iu per pound which is about the same as 1000 iu per kg).
There are those who say to use 2000 iu per kg but I prefer to stay on the conservative side. However, it doesn’t seem that the higher dose would be problematic for treating an acute illness. For some interesting reading, look at the work of Dr. Sircus in critical care, who uses much higher doses than what I listed. https://drsircus.com/general/icu-and-home-critical-care-introduction/
Sounds wonderful!
Would you mind giving me the link to the Vit C and Vit D that you get online?
Hi, Kaila –
I use the following (the capsules aren’t kosher so I squeeze the drops directly into the mouth); it’s very affordable and well-absorbed:
5000 iu per capsule – https://il.iherb.com/pr/Now-Foods-Vitamin-D-3-High-Potency-5-000-IU-120-Softgels/10421?rcode=OBO992
or 10,000 iu per capsule – https://il.iherb.com/pr/Now-Foods-Vitamin-D-3-High-Potency-10-000-IU-120-Softgels/52326?rcode=OBO992 .
It’s good to take D3 with vitamin K2, I don’t remember the ratio this moment. You can get D3 with K2 added but it’s generally much more expensive so I buy the K2 separately.
This is so interesting. I take 2000mg. Vit.D daily. (and I usually get the flu shot after the chaggim, but I didnt’ this year. )Iv’e been getting colds,congestion,low grade fever for the past 6 weeks. . I’m wondering if I would up my dosage for a bit(I would ask my doctor)if this would help me for now. Thanx for sharing the link above.
5000 iu is the generally recommended daily amount for healthy adults; 2000 is quite low. If you’re getting sick, that’s a good sign that you would probably benefit from more!
It all depends on how well you’re absorbing the vitamin D that you take and how much you’re getting from the sun.
I debated when writing this post about how much to share; I have much more information than what I wrote here. However, I think it’s important to keep things doable and we can sometimes get in our own way with making things too complicated.
You can definitely get blood work done to check your vitamin D levels and certainly a number of doctors recommend it, but that’s not my personal choice for myself and it wasn’t what the doctor whose recommendation I used said. He said, use this amount and it will knock out the flu, and it did!
I told my son in Israel to do this because his wife has the flu. He was asking me for a recommendation of a specific brand. He mentioned Altman. Are you familiar with this brand or do you have any other information about any other brands in Israel.
Thanks
Hi, Devorah, welcome and refuah sheleima to your son!
Though there are forms that are better absorbed, any vitamin D is fine. I bought whatever my local pharmacy had, which wasn’t my preferred one but it worked just fine!
Thank you! this is coming in very handy right now in my house.
Refuah sheleima to your entire family, Regina! I hope it passes quickly and easily for you all.
Does this also work for a cold, or sinus infection?
I don’t know why it wouldn’t be helpful for a generic cold – the flu is really just a hard core cold!
For megadoses of D3 when sick, how much K2 (mk7) should be used? Or is K2 even needed for short period megadose use? I’m asking for adults and children. I can’t seem to find an answer to this. Thx!
It’s been years since I looked up the k2:d ratio, I think it was something like 1:10. That’s off the top of my head since I don’t have time to look it up now; if you find out differently, please share!