You should always take Colekal D3 as instructed by your prescribing clinician, and as detailed on the label. If you’re unsure, discuss it with your clinician.

Take Colekal with a large meal to get the most out of the treatments. Tablets and capsules are swallowed with water, while effervescent tablets are dissolved in a glass of water and drunk.

There’s no difference in how well the treatment works between these three forms, but there might be other reasons why you would prefer one version over the others. For example, tablets might be difficult for you to swallow, while capsules may not be vegan friendly. If in doubt, speak to your clinician or pharmacist.

Whatever the dosage of your treatment, it’s important to follow the instructions of your clinician or pharmacist to make sure you get the most out of the medication or supplement in the safest way.

Supplement dosages of 400, 800 and 1,000 IU should be taken daily. For the treatment dosages, 3,200 IU is usually taken once a day for 12 weeks and the 4,000 IU doses once a day for ten weeks. The strongest dosages of 20,000 and 40,000 IU are taken once or twice a week for seven weeks in total.

At the end of the treatment courses, you’ll likely be recommended a maintenance, daily dose for the foreseeable future. This is to make sure that your levels do not fall again.

All treatments and supplements come with the risk of side effects, but for vitamin D, as long as the instructions have been properly followed, these are usually rare and mild in nature. The most common side effects occur in under one in 100 patients, which is referred to medically as uncommon. These include: hypercalcaemia (too much calcium in the blood) and hypercalciuria (too much calcium in the urine).

Even rarer than hypercalcaemia is an allergic reaction to Colekal. These occur in less than one in 1,000 people and will also need you to seek immediate medical attention if they occur. Symptoms include: skin rashes, swollen face, lips, throat and mouth, hives and severe itching.

Even rarer than hypercalcaemia is an allergic reaction to Colekal. These occur in less than one in 1,000 people and will also need you to seek immediate medical attention if they occur. Symptoms include: skin rashes, swollen face, lips, throat and mouth, hives and severe itching.

Capsules, tablets and effervescents are not always suitable for everyone with dietary restrictions, with animal derived gelatine being one of the most common ingredients in these products. It’s therefore important that you ask your prescribing clinician about the ingredients in Colekal if this is relevant to you.

Colekal D3 tablets, capsules and effervescents are all vegetarian and gluten free, but are not halal, kosher or vegan. So if you follow a particular diet, alternative vitamin D products may be more suitable.

As is often the case, nature does it best. As long as we have access to the sun, we can get almost all our vitamin D from it, which sets vitamin D apart from other vitamins and minerals. Because the sun isn’t always available to fill us with vitamin D, supplements can help to fill the void.

In other words, sunlight isn’t the alternative. Supplements are.

Vitamin D3, which is found in Colekal in the form of colecalciferol, is not the only form of vitamin D available to us, but it’s the best in terms of supplementation. Vitamin D2 is harder for the body to process efficiently and it does not store it as well as D3. For this reason, it’s usually recommended that you use vitamin D3 for both preventative measures and as a treatment.

Whilst we are thought to get just 10% of our vitamin D from food sources, they can help to top up our levels when they are dropping, particularly in winter. Vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 are obtained from different types of foods, with D2 found in vegetables (such as mushrooms that have been exposed to sunlight), and D3 in animal products, such as oily fish.

Many foods are also fortified (the vitamin is added to them) with vitamin D, such as margarine and cereals, so you can top up your levels with selected products alongside supplements.