"The very high levels of vitamin D that are often recommended by doctors and testing laboratories  and can be achieved only by taking supplements  are unnecessary and could be harmful an expert committee says. It also concludes that calcium supplements are not needed. The group said most people have adequate amounts of vitamin D in their blood supplied by their diets and natural sources like sunshine the committee says in a report that is to be released on Tuesday http For most people taking extra calcium and vitamin D supplements is not indicated said Dr. Clifford J. Rosen http a member of the panel and an osteoporosis expert at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute. Dr. J. Christopher Gallagher director of the bone metabolism unit at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha Neb. agreed adding The onus is on the people who propose extra calcium and vitamin D to show it is safe before they push it on people. Over the past few years the idea that nearly everyone needs extra calcium and vitamin D  especially vitamin D httpwell.blogs.nytimes.comthemiracleofvitamindsoundscienceorhype  has swept the nation. With calcium adolescent girls may be the only group that is getting too little the panel found. Older women on the other hand may take too much putting themselves at risk for kidney stones. And there is evidence that excess calcium can increase the risk of heart disease the group wrote. As for vitamin D some prominent doctors have said that most people need supplements or they will be at increased risk for a wide variety of illnesses including heart disease cancer and autoimmune diseases. And these days more and more people know their vitamin D levels because they are being tested for it as part of routine physical exams. The number of vitamin D tests has exploded said Dennis Black a reviewer of the report who is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. At the same time vitamin D sales have soared growing faster than those of any supplement according to The Nutrition Business Journal httpnutritionbusinessjournal.comsupplementsnewsvitamindomegafishoilfocusnewmilliondollarstudy. Sales rose  percent from  to  reaching  million. Everyone was hoping vitamin D would be kind of a panacea Dr. Black said. The report he added might quell the craze. I think this will have an impact on a lot of primary care providers he said. The member expert committee was convened by the Institute of Medicine http an independent nonprofit scientific body at the request of the United States and Canadian governments. It was asked to examine the available data  nearly  publications  to determine how much vitamin D and calcium people were getting how much was needed for optimal health and how much was too much. The two nutrients work together for bone health. Bone health though is only one of the benefits that have been attributed to vitamin D and there is not enough good evidence to support most other claims the committee said. Some labs have started reporting levels of less than  nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood as a deficiency. With that as a standard  percent of the population would be deemed deficient of vitamin D Dr. Rosen said. Most people need to take supplements to reach levels above  nanograms per milliliter he added. But the committee concluded a level of  to  nanograms is all that is needed for bone health and nearly everyone is in that range. Vitamin D is being added to more and more foods said Paul R. Thomas httpods.od.nih.govAboutPaul_Thomas.aspx of the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health httpods.od.nih.gov. Not only is it in orange juice and milk but more is being added to breakfast cereals and it now can be found in very high doses in supplement pills. Most vitamin D pills he said used to contain no more than  international units of it. Now it is easy to find pills even in places like WalMart with  international units. The committee though said people need only  international units a day.  To assess the amounts of vitamin D and calcium people are getting the panel looked at national data on diets. Most people they concluded get enough calcium from the foods they eat about  milligrams a day for most adults  for women ages  to . Vitamin D is more complicated the group said. In general most people are not getting enough vitamin D from their diets but they have enough of the vitamin in their blood probably because they are also making it naturally after being out in the sun and storing it in their bodies. The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research http and other groups applauded the report. It is a very balanced set of recommendations said Dr. Sundeep Khosla a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and the societys president. But Andrew Shao an executive vice president at the Council for Responsible Nutrition https a trade group said the panel was being overly cautious especially in its recommendations about vitamin D. He said there was no convincing evidence that people were being harmed by taking supplements and he said higher levels of vitamin D in particular could be beneficial. Such claims are not supported by the available evidence the committee wrote. They were based on studies that observed populations and concluded that people with lower levels of the vitamin had more of various diseases. Such studies have been misleading and most scientists agree that they cannot determine cause and effect. It is not clear how or why the claims for high vitamin D levels started medical experts say. First there were two studies which turned out to be incorrect that said people needed  nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood the upper end of what the committee says is a normal range. They were followed by articles and claims and books saying much higher levels   to  nanograms or even higher  were needed. After reviewing the data the committee concluded that the evidence for the benefits of high levels of vitamin D was inconsistent andor conflicting and did not demonstrate causality. Evidence also suggests that high levels of vitamin D can increase the risks for fractures and the overall death rate and can raise the risk for other diseases. While those studies are not conclusive any risk looms large when there is no demonstrable benefit. Those hints of risk are challenging the concept that more is better  the committee wrote. That is what surprised Dr. Black. We thought that probably higher is better he said. He has changed his mind and expects others will too I think this report will make people more cautious."