Annual Vitamin D Dose Linked to Increased Fall, Fracture Risk in Older Women

In the study, which is reproduced in full below, elderly women were randomly administered a 500,000 iu dose of vitamin D or a placebo.  To their surprise (Except me), there were more fractures in the women who received the  megadose of vitamin D than those who did not.  How could this be, since vitamin D is supposed to strengthen bones and improve strength and balance?

So, what's going on here?  I will do some educated speculating in an attempt to shed light on this mystery ....

There are several principles of nutrition that we need to be mindful of when giving supplements to people:

• Giving megadoses of a nutrient can trigger a protective response by the body to dump the excess.  In so doing, one or many other nutrients may be lost in the process. 
• In addition, the dumping process may go too far, further exacerbating the original deficiency. 
• An excess of one nutrient can cause a relative deficiency of one or more other nutrients. 
• The body may need large amounts of other nutrients in order to incorporate the megadose into the body.  If just one of these nutrients is in short supply, then the megadose may just sit wherever it ends  up, doing no real good and possibly a whole lot of harm.

It appears to me that this misguided study is violating all of these common sense principles of nutrition.