Vitamin deficiencies from changing diet?

Has anyone had any issues with this? I was just in Japan for 3 months and my body felt a little off while I was there, and I think it might be due to a vitamin D deficiency. I arrived in the winter so had a hoody and jeans almost the entirety of the trip. Would have moments where I felt a little dizzy and thought it might have been due to seismic activity. Towards the end of my trip I found myself drinking nearly a liter of milk a day. Looking back I think my body was/is craving that vitamin. My body was probably already low on vitamin D, but I think my diet just sent it completely over the edge.

Im going to consult my doctor, but wanted to see if anyone had a shared experience. Never in my life have I had this little dairy, meat and nuts. I like fish, but I wasn’t exactly eating mackerel everyday and would occasionally have a spicy cod roe onigiri from the konbini or sushi. The thing about my diet that I remember thinking the most about was the amount of protein I was getting and coincidentally, foods that are high in protein are usually high in vitamin D. Also lost about 10lbs, so my diet and lifestyle was pretty different.

7 comments
  1. You don’t need that much vitamin D to be healthy, and you were probably spending more time outside walking around than you normally do, so you were probably getting plenty of it.

    Not feeling well could be from a million different things. Go to a doctor and get checked out, but I wouldn’t go in thinking that it’s necessarily vitamins, or even anything necessarily related to Japan

  2. Japanese milk is usually not supplemented with vitamin D. Traditionally, they’d get vitamin D from cold water fish and sun-dried shiitake mushrooms.

    Are you getting enough water? Walking a little beyond your limits? Not good to mess with dizziness. You should have seen a doctor and eliminated the testable stuff.

  3. You can get enough D from the sun here, even in winter unless your way up north.
    But iron and calcium aren’t that big of a part of the typical Japanese diet, so keep on drinking that milk and eat some oatmeal/ liver/ chickpeas etc.
    And get checked out by a doctor.

  4. Could be a mineral imbalance.

    Salt / sodium, magnesium, potassium

    Japanese food will probably give you enough salt, the other minerals could be problematic.

  5. Can’t say it’s the same condition but after a few years living in Japan I consulted a doctor and found out I was iron deficient

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