Interesting. I live at the 45th parallel, and try to get out into the sun everyday during the warmer months, with 5000IU orally per day during the gloomy part of the year. Now I'm wondering if I should get my levels checked.
I’ve always been wary of overconsuming fat-soluble vitamins (ADEK). Seeing strong medical consensus that 6000IU/day of Vitamin D is safe and even desirable gives me confidence to supplement more liberally.
TLDR
Unfortunately, medicine took a very long time to realize that vitamin D is not simply a vitamin that prevents rickets.
We know today that vitamin D is a powerful nuclear receptor-activating hormone of critical importance, especially to the immune system.
With the available data mentioned above, the proposed doses would probably suffice to maintain vitamin D levels around or over 75-100 nmol/L, with practically zero risk of toxicity.
Meanwhile, my daily 5000IU Vitamin D pills were recalled by some authority in Finland for “excessive dose”, and since it appears that a recall anywhere in the EU will apply to the whole EU, I was given a refund and presumably won’t be able to buy it again.
I recall reading some research which indicated that daily dosage resulted in slightly better protections against cancer. Though better than not taking it at all.
I just got more 5000IU at Walmart which was a nice surprise. Normally I take two 2000IU tablets.
I get gummies at 2000000000 IU and that's not even the final form of my vitamin
Also what's an IU. Apparently it's meant to normalize impact across vitamin D species of which there are multiple. Part of me can see the reasoning but it runs contrary to how much of medicine/pharma operates, generally in such form as either mg per time interval or mg/kg per time interval. It would be like taking the whole armada of blood pressure drugs and dictating their doses in mmHg instead of milligrams. If only things were so simple!
I've been taking 6000-8000 IU of vitamin D daily along with K2, with no issues. I recommend using drops instead of pills as they allow for more flexible dosing. They aren't more expensive either (in my experience, they're actually cheaper).
This article is not technical and is 4 pages and includes a 1 paragraph executive summary. There's only 2 pages of content.
There's no specific info about any experiment. It just claims a statistics error was recently found in another paper/experiment. It claims fixing the error suggests we should supplement more Vitamin D.
It gestures vaguely at "Diabetes" and "immune health" and "we used to eat fish" to claim that we want/need more blood Vitamin D. It also points to some other actual studies that might have good evidence that we want or need more Vitamin D.
I would doubt anything in this could cause harm. Vitamin D is fat soluble so taking too much can be dangerous, but I don't think the recommended doses here are close to that dosage.
This paper aims for slightly more than 100nmol/l Vitamin D marker in blood, while other NIH papers claim >375nmol/l is getting into Vitamin D toxicity territory.
NIH previously claimed a serum level of less than 72nmol/l is a health problem, so this paper is bumping that up slightly.
My understanding is that large scale tests of Vitamin D supplementation don't ever seem to turn out as great as all these papers would imply. Maybe their experiments had too low a dose.
My own supplementation has done jack and shit. Maybe I needed a higher dose.
I still hold skepticism that all of humanity needs a supplement, as that's just a sales pitch from a company at that point, but the "Everyone really does need a shitload of Vitamin D supplement" hypothesis at least has a mechanism that makes sense.
Do we need to be skeptical of NIH because of Trump? or they're still okay?
Also, remember - don't take D on its own. Always with magnesium, or you get harmed by it, for all that it also does you good. Body is not built for raw D.
Also also remember, D2 is a vitamin, D3 is a hormone.
If you're looking to build and maintain healthy vitamin D levels, D3 is generally the better supplement choice, according to health experts and studies. Consult your doctor to determine your needs and the best form for you, especially if you have a deficiency or dietary restrictions. -Google Gemini
I think it's important to clarify understandings for non-scientific/med community each time these types of technical discussions occur.
I'm conflicted.
It seems like in Canada the recommendation was that there was no actual error and the dosage of 1000 IU is still considered good.
It's hard to find more than 2500 IU.
I've been taking 10000 IU per day for a year. I mentioned that to my primary care doctor. When I got home and read my health summary, I saw that he wrote "Vitamin D abuse" as one of his concerns.
It’s crazy how many of these comments completely ignored TFA. Hackernews is in decline and will be indistinguishable from Facebook or Reddit before long.
23 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 49.0 ms ] threadWe know today that vitamin D is a powerful nuclear receptor-activating hormone of critical importance, especially to the immune system.
With the available data mentioned above, the proposed doses would probably suffice to maintain vitamin D levels around or over 75-100 nmol/L, with practically zero risk of toxicity.
I take a 2000IU tablet a few times a week now.
I'm certainly not going to put something from amazon in my body. God only knows what you're actually getting
I just got more 5000IU at Walmart which was a nice surprise. Normally I take two 2000IU tablets.
Also what's an IU. Apparently it's meant to normalize impact across vitamin D species of which there are multiple. Part of me can see the reasoning but it runs contrary to how much of medicine/pharma operates, generally in such form as either mg per time interval or mg/kg per time interval. It would be like taking the whole armada of blood pressure drugs and dictating their doses in mmHg instead of milligrams. If only things were so simple!
There's no specific info about any experiment. It just claims a statistics error was recently found in another paper/experiment. It claims fixing the error suggests we should supplement more Vitamin D.
It gestures vaguely at "Diabetes" and "immune health" and "we used to eat fish" to claim that we want/need more blood Vitamin D. It also points to some other actual studies that might have good evidence that we want or need more Vitamin D.
I would doubt anything in this could cause harm. Vitamin D is fat soluble so taking too much can be dangerous, but I don't think the recommended doses here are close to that dosage.
This paper aims for slightly more than 100nmol/l Vitamin D marker in blood, while other NIH papers claim >375nmol/l is getting into Vitamin D toxicity territory.
>https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6158375/
NIH previously claimed a serum level of less than 72nmol/l is a health problem, so this paper is bumping that up slightly.
My understanding is that large scale tests of Vitamin D supplementation don't ever seem to turn out as great as all these papers would imply. Maybe their experiments had too low a dose.
My own supplementation has done jack and shit. Maybe I needed a higher dose.
I still hold skepticism that all of humanity needs a supplement, as that's just a sales pitch from a company at that point, but the "Everyone really does need a shitload of Vitamin D supplement" hypothesis at least has a mechanism that makes sense.
Also, remember - don't take D on its own. Always with magnesium, or you get harmed by it, for all that it also does you good. Body is not built for raw D.
Also also remember, D2 is a vitamin, D3 is a hormone.
I think it's important to clarify understandings for non-scientific/med community each time these types of technical discussions occur.
I have no idea what to follow at this point
Some previous discussions:
4 months ago, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705486
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24768721
2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15867918