Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

5

I've been looking but I can't find anything via The Oracle (Google).

Does D-3 play any role in energy metabolism? Would D-3 status have any effect on liver or on the body's ability to cope with carbohydrate?

The higher the carb-intake of societies the more equatorial they are and therefore naturally the more sun they get. Is there something functional here?

flag	asked Feb 1 2012 at 20:40 Just Mike 1

Dragonfly · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-02 01:13:10Z UTC

Good question!

Since Vitamin D helps with insulin sensitivity, it makes some sense to me in theory that we would be able to tolerate more carbs the closer to the equator we lived (or by having an equally high D level.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19781131

However, in practice I'm not sure if this is true. My last D level was 91 ng/ml and I feel best when my carbs are 50-80 gm/day, FWIW.

James · Answer 2 · 2012-02-01 23:20:55Z UTC

I've seen some studies indicating that it might help with weight loss. Correlation though, not necessarily causation. Essentially along the lines of "everyone with sufficient D levels didn't gain weight, some people with low D levels gained weight". Nothing more firm than that, and it doesn't directly relate to carbs. The theories on it seem to be based around Vitamin D possibly downregulating the creation of new fat cells. I don't recall seeing anything saying Vitamin D boosts metabolism.

D3 and carbohydrates

2 Answers