High-dose vitamin D redirects surplus calories towards muscle growth and away from fat storage by modulating myostatin and leptin signalling. This promotes lean mass, strength, and linear growth without increasing overall weight, offering a new framework for enhancing body composition, energy balance, and metabolic health across the lifespan.
May 2024 – Preprint
Key takeaways
- More muscle, less fat with vitamin D: High-dose vitamin D shifts how the body uses extra calories, favouring muscle development and linear growth rather than fat storage. This redistribution enhances body composition and strength without increasing total body weight, offering a novel approach to managing fat accumulation and muscle loss, especially relevant to ageing and metabolic health
- Leptin sensitivity gets a boost: Vitamin D doesn’t just increase leptin production from fat tissue, it also improves the body’s responsiveness to leptin. Enhanced leptin sensitivity raises energy expenditure without affecting appetite or activity levels, suggesting a powerful mechanism for supporting lean body mass and metabolic efficiency in conditions like obesity and sarcopenia
- Myostatin suppression aids growth: Vitamin D reduces myostatin, a hormone that limits muscle growth. Lower myostatin levels free up the body to build and maintain muscle mass, reinforcing strength and vitality. This mechanism reveals how vitamin D can be a key player in preserving muscle through midlife and into older age
- A new model for energy balance: The findings support a shift from the traditional view of energy storage to a model of energy balance sensing—where vitamin D, leptin, and myostatin together guide how the body allocates calories. This could explain seasonal growth patterns and inform future therapies for metabolic and age-related diseases
Disclaimer: This article is a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed, so its findings should be interpreted with caution.
Read the article at: Roizen, Jeffrey, et al. High dose dietary vitamin D allocates surplus calories to muscle and growth instead of fat via modulation of myostatin and leptin signaling. 2024. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4202165/v1