Hi,
I've hear a lot of ppl mentioning the possibility of Vit D3 overdose.
Has anyone actually had it happen to their animals? Does anyone have any idea what the actual symptoms look like?
It seems to happen in quite a few chameleons when people use supplements that contain vitamin D3 too often. An overdose of vitamin D3 presents as metabolic bone disease.
"Signs of MBD include stunted growth, bent legs bones, fractures of those bones (double elbows or knees), weakness, falling off branches, grabbing at its own legs, tongue not shooting as far, a 'rubber' jaw, the mouth doesn’t close all the way, etc."
Symptoms are pain, constipation and/or eggbinding, probably other not very specific things.
Out of the above signs only weakness and falling off branches (which are actually pretty similar to each other) in D3 overdose might make sense to me due to organ damage and buildup of waste products in the organism creating neural issues. The rest are all directly connected to calcium's role in muscle contraction, nerve conduction or bone strength.
Is there anything more specific for D3 toxicity? How does one test for it?
According to R. Ken Lopez excess D3 causes absorption of the bone and mimics hyperparathyroidism. Sorry I cant find the link to his article at the moment.
I have been interested in this thread and kind of expecting an answer to this question that would not have showed up on casual necropsy to an untrained eye, let alone something I could see obvious signs of. Something that could possibly shorten a life, not in an obvious way but a way that could lead one to believe the animal involved had just kind of died of old age at times.
My Jax recently was extremely wobbly to the point of almost falling. I'm new to owning her so I didn't know that you don't need to give her D3 everyday, which I was doing. I stopped and just fed her gut loaded crickets and she went back to normal.