Good article, but it does not cover toxicity; you can take too much vitamin D and this has very negative affects. Usually a multivitamin is enough for supplementing; taking extra is where you can run into issues; consult your Doctor.
It’s interesting that his doctor wouldn’t prescribe a vitamin D supplement because it would supposedly be too expensive for the health care system. Fortunately, vitamin D supplements are generally inexpensive to buy. I doubt I’d ever get a prescription for one, they’d probably just tell me to pick some up at the pharmacy downstairs.
> At a checkup a few years ago, a doctor told me I was deficient in vitamin D. But he wouldn’t write me a prescription for supplements, simply because, as he put it, everyone in the UK is deficient. Putting the entire population on vitamin D supplements would be too expensive for the country’s national health service, he told me.
Ugh. It's amazing how incompetent medical systems are. I was also deficient in vitamin D and my doctor wrote a prescription. When I did the math, the cost was something like >$.10 per 1000IU. But if I bought the vitamins from a normal store, I would pay <$.01 per 1000IU. Since a person lacking sunlight only needs 1000IU, the price for giving everyone in the UK Vitamin D would be <$700k/day. And probably much less since most people won't need this high of a dose and bulk quantities would be cheaper.
For healthy people, taking extra vitamins is pointless, but giving them to people who are deficient in vitamins is one of the cheapest health interventions for the benefits.
PSA: if you're feeling off, make sure your doctor checks your various vitamin levels and see if cheap OTC vitamins help.
I found that taking a specific brand of Vitamin D (the Genestra D-mulsion in particular) right before bed was guaranteed to give me vivid dreams. I've had half a dozen friends try it, with every single one reporting similar results.
>For me, that means topping up with a supplement. The UK government advises everyone in the country to take a 10-microgram vitamin D supplement over autumn and winter
My last blood test showed I was slightly deficient in vitamin D - my doctor recommended a 50 microgram (2000 IU) supplement. My next test to see how well it' working isn't for a few more months.
I’ve wondered whether vitamin D is a real time signal within the circadian rhythm regulation system. Perhaps it is released in response to sunlight in order to let other parts of the system know it is daytime.
If it were like this, bulk dosing would be expected to be better than nothing (“maximum daytime!!!! Followed immediately by a very long slow sunset at whatever curve it is cleaned up in the body), but it would be better to dose continuously in real time at a level and body location(s) that would simulate the range of sunlight throughout the day.
Can anyone professionally familiar with the research in this area comment?
I live in the tropics and there is plenty of sunshine here. So my skin doctor told me to avoid the sun at all costs, always wear suncreen and a hat, don't go out in the daytime. A few years of that and now I have a vitamin D deficiency.
I can’t really check for the studies right now since I’m on the phone, but I distinctly remember being interested in the theme of skin cancer due to personal reasons, and that studies found that great exposure to the sun, although slightly increasing the risk of benign skin cancer, does greatly decrease the incidence of non benign skin cancer.
Well, supplementing vitamin D surely is cheaper than dealing with accelerated skin aging and cancer. Unless your doctor is a vampire, I presume they didn't mean to imply you should never go outside, but rather avoid any direct sunlight. I suspect the shade and sunscreen wasn't the issue.
I have never wanted to flag a comment on hacker news more. Do you also recommend that people smoke based on... nothing but feelz?
I am 50. I had to have skin cancer removed from my face. I have never seen a more busy doctors office than this dermatologist's office. They were printing money. The waiting room was always full, half filled with men in their 50s up (so probably not getting cosmetic dermatology surgery). Some had noses/ears missing. Granted I grew up surfing in Santa Cruz. But don't think 'skin cancer isn't a thing'.
And the follow up discussion here. Do people here not have parents? Do you not talk to ANYONE over 50 about their lives? Skin cancer is actually real and common and scary AF.
We only need a few minutes sun exposure in the Australian sun at a UV Index of 14 for vitamin D. 20 minutes to start burning. Maybe there's a happy medium between a bit of sun exposure and no sun exposure.
The trick is to put sunscreen on the most exposed areas of the body face and upper surfaces, the rest through one layer of clothing e.g. tshirt for enough for vitamin D. It only needs 30mins to one hour exposure arms and legs per week
I have polymorphisms in a gene called CYP2R1 (Vitamin D 25-hydroxylase, involved in activation of vitamin D precursors). My polymorphism lead to lower levels of D3.
My doc put me on 1000mcg of D3 a day for a month after I tested low. I came back in for blood testing and my Calcium levels were extremely high (Not good!). So the doctor ordered me to stop the vitamin D to see what was going on.
As it turns out I have even more lower frequency polymophisms in a gene called CALCA (Calcitonin is a peptide hormone that causes a rapid but short-lived drop in the level of calcium and phosphate in blood by promoting the incorporation of those ions in the bones.). So basically since I do not realease a lot of Calcitonin naturally I need to get it from food.
Guess what food is extremely high in Vitamin D3[1] and Calcitonin[2]?
Salmon! I have a genetic history of people that ate a lot of salmon so this makes sense.
Genetics matter people. I will assume that most people who have irish/britsh should be getting their D3 from fatty fish since sunlight is so rare there.
"Putting the entire population on vitamin D supplements would be too expensive for the country’s national health service, he told me."
This seems absolutely bonkers. Vitamin D is dirt cheap, and if you can think at all beyond first-order effects, the improvement in immune health alone would likely pay for itself in terms of cost to the healthcare system.
In the 1930s, the US starting fortifying milk with vitamin D in an effort to eradicate rickets, so it's definitely doable. Learned this after moving to Germany and realizing none of the milk here has any vitamin D added.
No one will probably believe this, but I think dust mite exposure is a major cause of vitamin D deficiency and a lot of the negative outcomes associated with low vitamin D are actually second+ order effects of dust mite exposure. Just posting in case it reaches one person out of the 100s of millions who are sick from dust mites.
>In fairness to researchers, it can be difficult to run a randomized clinical trial for vitamin D supplements. That’s because most of us get the bulk of our vitamin D from sunlight
And how hard is it to make such controlled studies on prison populations (where both sun and food intake is also a known value)? Make it voluntary and give some incentives for those wanting to participate. Can study supplement effects for one or even five years, it's not like they're going anywhere.
That's also a question I have when I hear about diet studies. What's easier than doing such in prison populations? Make it as voluntary as it's for people outside, and there's no ethical issue. We're talking like checking the effect of this or that food or diet style, which they can let different people chose their own. They already eat what they're given anyway, that would be an improvement.
> And how hard is it to make such controlled studies on prison populations (where both sun and food intake is also a known value)?
Very hard. Not impossible, but even something as low risk as a dietary study with Vitamin D supplements would come under very heavy scrutiny and likely be rejected.
Prisoners are considered a vulnerable group with diminished autonomy so there is no such thing as “voluntary as it's for people outside“ in prison. Full stop. The Nuremberg Code, Belmont Report, and Declaration of Helsinki all explicitly spell that out.
Even ignoring the obvious “ethical issues” that have been settled since the Nazis, they’re also legally protected. See 45 CFR 46 Subpart C [1]. Even if the experiment got past the academic ERBs, the HHS ones will likely shut it down.
Linking a molecule, that takes part in a complex cellular mechanism, with a general health outcome will never go well and is nonsense.
Fellow tech people forget hacking your body with innocent pills or having any meaningful effect without sacrifice. Kill your stress, maintain normal weight and have nice relations.
I do not tolerate vitamin d supplements, they make me sick. Im actually switching to eating salmon and other fish in winter + getting the sperti vitamin d lamp.
I went to the doctor about eight months ago for an unrelated ailment, but the doctor wanted to do some blood tests. Turns out I had a fairly large vitamin d deficiency.
The doctor told me just to pick up some supplements. After a couple weeks I was genuinely surprised how much better I felt. Overall less lethargic. I've been feeling over all just kind of blegh for a long time and it really seems to have helped.
My dad had suggested vitamin d and I didn't take it seriously but he was right.
With so much of the UK with living with unspecified malaise, some significant part of which likely contributing to their low employment participation rate, I suspect giving everyone vitamin D would be very cost effective.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 81.7 ms ] threadUgh. It's amazing how incompetent medical systems are. I was also deficient in vitamin D and my doctor wrote a prescription. When I did the math, the cost was something like >$.10 per 1000IU. But if I bought the vitamins from a normal store, I would pay <$.01 per 1000IU. Since a person lacking sunlight only needs 1000IU, the price for giving everyone in the UK Vitamin D would be <$700k/day. And probably much less since most people won't need this high of a dose and bulk quantities would be cheaper.
For healthy people, taking extra vitamins is pointless, but giving them to people who are deficient in vitamins is one of the cheapest health interventions for the benefits.
PSA: if you're feeling off, make sure your doctor checks your various vitamin levels and see if cheap OTC vitamins help.
My last blood test showed I was slightly deficient in vitamin D - my doctor recommended a 50 microgram (2000 IU) supplement. My next test to see how well it' working isn't for a few more months.
If it were like this, bulk dosing would be expected to be better than nothing (“maximum daytime!!!! Followed immediately by a very long slow sunset at whatever curve it is cleaned up in the body), but it would be better to dose continuously in real time at a level and body location(s) that would simulate the range of sunlight throughout the day.
Can anyone professionally familiar with the research in this area comment?
I am 50. I had to have skin cancer removed from my face. I have never seen a more busy doctors office than this dermatologist's office. They were printing money. The waiting room was always full, half filled with men in their 50s up (so probably not getting cosmetic dermatology surgery). Some had noses/ears missing. Granted I grew up surfing in Santa Cruz. But don't think 'skin cancer isn't a thing'.
And the follow up discussion here. Do people here not have parents? Do you not talk to ANYONE over 50 about their lives? Skin cancer is actually real and common and scary AF.
- don't stay out in the sun too long, if you do, apply sunscreen
- 10-15 minutes of sunlight exposure a day is completely fine
My doc put me on 1000mcg of D3 a day for a month after I tested low. I came back in for blood testing and my Calcium levels were extremely high (Not good!). So the doctor ordered me to stop the vitamin D to see what was going on.
As it turns out I have even more lower frequency polymophisms in a gene called CALCA (Calcitonin is a peptide hormone that causes a rapid but short-lived drop in the level of calcium and phosphate in blood by promoting the incorporation of those ions in the bones.). So basically since I do not realease a lot of Calcitonin naturally I need to get it from food.
Guess what food is extremely high in Vitamin D3[1] and Calcitonin[2]?
Salmon! I have a genetic history of people that ate a lot of salmon so this makes sense.
Genetics matter people. I will assume that most people who have irish/britsh should be getting their D3 from fatty fish since sunlight is so rare there.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6566758/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_calcitonin).
This seems absolutely bonkers. Vitamin D is dirt cheap, and if you can think at all beyond first-order effects, the improvement in immune health alone would likely pay for itself in terms of cost to the healthcare system.
And how hard is it to make such controlled studies on prison populations (where both sun and food intake is also a known value)? Make it voluntary and give some incentives for those wanting to participate. Can study supplement effects for one or even five years, it's not like they're going anywhere.
That's also a question I have when I hear about diet studies. What's easier than doing such in prison populations? Make it as voluntary as it's for people outside, and there's no ethical issue. We're talking like checking the effect of this or that food or diet style, which they can let different people chose their own. They already eat what they're given anyway, that would be an improvement.
Very hard. Not impossible, but even something as low risk as a dietary study with Vitamin D supplements would come under very heavy scrutiny and likely be rejected.
Prisoners are considered a vulnerable group with diminished autonomy so there is no such thing as “voluntary as it's for people outside“ in prison. Full stop. The Nuremberg Code, Belmont Report, and Declaration of Helsinki all explicitly spell that out.
Even ignoring the obvious “ethical issues” that have been settled since the Nazis, they’re also legally protected. See 45 CFR 46 Subpart C [1]. Even if the experiment got past the academic ERBs, the HHS ones will likely shut it down.
[1] https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/...
Fellow tech people forget hacking your body with innocent pills or having any meaningful effect without sacrifice. Kill your stress, maintain normal weight and have nice relations.
I really want to meet the people that create these for money and ask them how much it hurt to have their ethics surgically removed.
I’ve talked to people that work at cigarette companies, online gambling, and worse. It’s always fascinating to hear their excuses.
The doctor told me just to pick up some supplements. After a couple weeks I was genuinely surprised how much better I felt. Overall less lethargic. I've been feeling over all just kind of blegh for a long time and it really seems to have helped.
My dad had suggested vitamin d and I didn't take it seriously but he was right.