Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very coloured centric viewpoint. The fact is that the majority of people of planet earth can go out in the sunshine at the right time of day and get 80-90% the vitamin D they need and get the rest from a balanced diet.
No that is not true at all. In today's world people of all races are living everywhere, so we should give recommendations based off a person's individual health. It is simply not true that a brown skinned person can absorb enough vitamin D from the sun in the northern latitudes. I said the above viewpoint was caucasian centric because it assumed that everyone could get enough vitamin D from the sun. My response is no…
The Big Vitamin D Mistake
231–240 of 459 posts
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#232A couple years after I moved to Seattle I started noticing some odd aches and pains. After a coworker had similar issues, I went to the doctor, and they tested my Vitamin D levels. They were ridiculously low. They had me on a high initial dose, and than taking supplements ever since. I've heard the same story from tons of neighbors. Nowadays it's one of my first suggestions for new transplants. It's made a marked dif…
What sorts of aches and pains? I'm only asking since my body just effing hurts sometimes, usually my upper back/ribs...especially when I'm stoned :/
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#233This makes it sound impossible for some people to get enough vitamin D from sun and food without supplements. If you're fair skinned and living in northern climates, you'll be deficient even with a healthy diet given that you can't be out in the sun that long without burning. Is the human body that defective?
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#234This article seems to be a low quality review of other research with a clickbatey title (full text here: https://www.jpmph.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.3961/jpmph.16.... ). Pubmed is sort of like arxiv.org and the fact this has an nih.gov base url should not be taken as an endorsement of it by the NIH. That said I do actually believe that more then the recommended amount of vitamin D can be beneficial and the recommen…
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#235Is it standard for medical papers to write values with four significant figures when they appear to have less than one significant figure worth of precision? This is an actual question.
Are you talking about the abstract or is there something in the actual paper you're talking about? Because I can't personally see anything in the abstract to suggest that the values quoted to 4 s.f. only have 1 s.f. of precision.
Look further at the paper where the 8895 number comes from [1]. That's the only number reported to more than 2 sig figs in the paper and comes in this context [emphasis mine]: "It also estimated that 8895 IU of vitamin D per day may be needed to accomplish that 97.5% of individuals achieve serum 25(OH)D values of 50 nmol/L or more. As this dose is far beyond the range of studied doses, caution is warranted when interpreting this estimate. Regardless, the very high estimate illustrates that the dose is well in excess of the current RDA of 600 IU per day and the tolerable upper intake of 4000 IU per day [1]." The two figures don't even show half the range needed to see this value and make it pretty clear that this is a laughable amount of precision to report. To make this clear: the value reported is the intercept of the dashed red line with the 50nmol/L line in the second figure -- which has been extrapolated out to a value almost three times as large as the highest dose used in any experiment. And the extrapolation is done on a curve that is getting very close to level at that point so even a minor error in dose response would cause a large error in reported dose. Frankly, after looking at this, I don't think the originally posted article should have quoted this number in its abstract - the point of this paper seems to be to show that the standard value of 600 IU/day is unsupported form the data, not to suggest that their 8895 IU/day is well supported.
Consider the most well-studied nutritional number we ever see: the daily caloric intake! It's never given more than 2 sig figs and often just 1! And this study is making the argument that the daily recommendations for this are off by a factor of 10x. It'll take a lot to convince me that any number in nutrition can be reported to 4 significant figures, and even then I expect that it would be useless since inter-person variation is going to cause at least a 1% difference (probably more like 25% differences like calories just for men/women differences).
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except during the summer months, the skin makes little if any vitamin D from the sun at latitudes above 37 degrees north (in the United States, the shaded region in the map) or below 37 degrees south of the equator. People who live in these areas are at relatively greater risk for vitamin D deficiency. Check out the map: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/time-for-more...
Supposedly this is why Northern Europeans evolved lactose tolerance. Asians got the D they needed from the sun and leafy veggies.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#237I was recommended Vitamin D by the wife of a Chiropractor. I do 2000IU somewhat daily to every other day in the winter & 5000IU if I feel a cold coming on with some extra zinc. This has made a significant improvement in my ability to fend off colds. That said, I do try to exercise a few times a week & eat as reasonably healthy as one can do in the far north midwest of America.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#238This is double what I'm taking. The US RDA is 1/10th of this amount.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
This should be reiterated: Please consult a professional before drastically altering the chemical composition of your ephemeral body. I know it sounds downright crazy, but it's possible that someone who's studied medicine and practiced it for years, actually knows better than random anonymous forum users.
"The best way to get vitamins is to eat better." -Every physician ever.
A fruit or vegetable that have traveled thousand of miles before being delivered to you has almost no vitamins left in it and probably didn't have much to start with considering soil depletion.
I believe (emphasis on believe) that supplementation is necessary even if you "eat right".
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except during the summer months, the skin makes little if any vitamin D from the sun at latitudes above 37 degrees north (in the United States, the shaded region in the map) or below 37 degrees south of the equator. People who live in these areas are at relatively greater risk for vitamin D deficiency. Check out the map: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/time-for-more...
Supposedly this is why Northern Europeans evolved lactose tolerance. Asians got the D they needed from the sun and leafy veggies.