Hey people who follow the science: As an “indoor human”, how much should I be taking? (TIA!)
Science allows you to get your Vitamin D tested, otherwise you're just guessing.
Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
91–100 of 137 posts
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would advise taking a K2 MK7 supplement with D3, or get a supplement that contains both. Personally, I take one capsule a day that contains both 3000IU of D3 and 100μg of K2 MK7. D3 by itself can cause high calcium levels, to the point of toxicity in very high doses. The K2 moves the calcium from the blood to bones.
The Japanese recipe for fermented soybean, called Natto is an abundant natural source. Not easy to find in the US though. I've found it offline at Japanese groceries and one boutique grocer at an exorbitant price so far.
Rather an acquired taste though. I don't mind it (though have never gone out of my way to find it); my Japanese partner can't stand it.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#93Like all studies into Vitamin D supplementation that aren’t randomized controlled trials, it’s very hard to tell apart cause and effect. Vitamin D naturally occurs when people go outside and get exposed to the sun, and going outside is correlated with all sorts of healthy traits. Also, publicity of the association of vitamin D with good health has led people who care about their health or who have access to good medi…
> Vitamin D naturally occurs when people go outside and get exposed to the sun, ... Not sure where you are living? If I go outside in winter (+2 months around) I need gloves, cap, scarf. Literally only a little portion of my face gets some sunlight until 5pm. Then it is dark! I live in Germany! So, this isn't an argument for a lot of people in cold countries or dark countries. Mostly both.. Exposing to the sun is ver…
That is kind of beside the point. You would have to prove that people in cold countries never get any vitamin D from the sunlight throughout the entire year to eliminate it as a factor.
You would also have to be able to prove that people people with vitamin D Rich diets are identical to those without them.
Without a randomized controlled trial of vitamin D intervention, there is no way to say for sure that people with more or less vitamin D are seeing a benefit from the vitamin itself, and not some other hidden Factor.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, TIL. That’s kind of nuts, I just looked at latitude lines because I was sure you had to be wrong but it looks like where I live (which is actually Hamilton) is the same latitude as northern Italy. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same as Florence, where the forecasted highs over the next week are in mid- to high-teens (C). We have a blizzard and most days next week the high is 1 degree. I honestly didn’t realize…
Wind and ocean currents make Western europe way warmer than Canada for a given latitude. Ottawa is only about 45 degrees north, same as Paris. Most of England is further North than that.
Minneapolis is also at 45 degrees; in fact there's a plaque in a public pathway that marks the exact spot. We just recently started getting sunlight at 5 PM again, but that will change soon once DST takes effect.
Europe is going to be in big trouble if the gulf current ever stops flowing.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#95I’d like to supplement but every time I take one I get muscle cramps. I suppose it’s just pulling all the magnesium out of my body or something? I tried magnesium supplements with it but it didn’t help. Maybe 5000IU is just too much?
Id suggest you get a couple vitamin d tests in different seasons and also consider your latitude. i was taking about 4000iu + natural sources in the winter and i still tested low and had to increase my intake. If you dont test you're sorta just guessing. take with meal or fats. cramps could also be from low potassium. my natural sources i use are - whole fat yogurt - pastured eggs (way higher in vit. d than grain fed…
How much K2 do you take? 100mg? And do you vary the time of day that you take it?
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#96This is a very neutral headline. But for the tl;dr crowd: > Across all formulations, vitamin D exposure was associated with significantly longer dementia-free survival and lower dementia incidence rate than no exposure (hazard ratio = 0.60, 95% confidence interval: 0.55–0.65). The effect of vitamin D on incidence rate differed significantly across the strata of sex, cognitive status, and APOE ε4 status.
You can get your APOE ε4 status, which is a marker for Alzheimer's and dementia, from any DNA test like 23AndMe. To protect your privacy: use a fake name, new email address, and get a temporary UPS Store mailbox address for the kit to be mailed to. Use a Visa gift card for payment. Yes, it can be done and it works.
Here's a link to that page on 23AndMe: https://you.23andme.com/reports/ghr.alzheimers
In essence, this gene controls the levels of cholesterol and fats and the blood. If you're prone to high cholesterol and triglycerides, you can mitigate it with a low dosage statin or through diet modifications.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to find good answers on actual timelines, but vitamin D is fat soluble and you don't become insufficient after just a week of sitting in the dark.
I am talking about months of actual lack of sunlight, not a week. I for myself know 2 friends which diagnosed with vitamin D insufficiency. Because we are relatively young this lead to bone problems while doing sports. Without sports it wouldn't be recognized.
Interestingly, this was a bit over-diagnosed maybe 10ish years ago. Not saying this was the case, but some doctors were ordering VitD tests, getting results that said below average or below normal and interpreting it as insufficiency.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had thought that it was possible to get vitamin D from moderate sun exposure in the winter and went looking for info to refute your post. Turns out you are right and I was wrong: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/well/live/vitamin-d-defic... People living above the 37th parallel, basically the tropics, may not be getting enough in the winter, because the sun isn't strong enough to provide it.
Yes, this is the reason people further from the tropics tend to have lighter skin and are more likely to have genetics allowing for lactose tolerance throughout life. They're natural adaptations by the body, in response to being in an environment which sunlight (and therefore vitamin D) is more scarce.
The lactose tolerance part doesn't really make sense because dairy products are not naturally high in vitamin D. Companies add the vitamin D to milk. Butter is an exception because it is nearly all fat, so it has a lot more vitamin D. But, because butter is nearly all fat, it also doesn't contain much lactose and is usually well tolerated by people with lactose intolerance.
I have read that the correlation of latitude and lactose tolerance has to do with the fact that milk was less prevalent in warmer climates because it did not store or travel well. So unless you grew up right around milk producing cattle, your gene pool had little exposure too it and thus little evolutionary pressure to continue to tolerate milk after infancy.
By contrast, Europe has a much colder climate and was well suited to dairy cows and storing and shipping dairy products.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Vitamin D naturally occurs when people go outside and get exposed to the sun, ... Not sure where you are living? If I go outside in winter (+2 months around) I need gloves, cap, scarf. Literally only a little portion of my face gets some sunlight until 5pm. Then it is dark! I live in Germany! So, this isn't an argument for a lot of people in cold countries or dark countries. Mostly both.. Exposing to the sun is ver…
I had thought that it was possible to get vitamin D from moderate sun exposure in the winter and went looking for info to refute your post. Turns out you are right and I was wrong: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/well/live/vitamin-d-defic... People living above the 37th parallel, basically the tropics, may not be getting enough in the winter, because the sun isn't strong enough to provide it.
For europeans - you'd have to go to southern Greece islands like Crete to get below 37th. Even Athens is 37.59 and northen Greece is 40 and above. So basically most of the Europe won't get enough during winter.
Re: Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, TIL. That’s kind of nuts, I just looked at latitude lines because I was sure you had to be wrong but it looks like where I live (which is actually Hamilton) is the same latitude as northern Italy. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same as Florence, where the forecasted highs over the next week are in mid- to high-teens (C). We have a blizzard and most days next week the high is 1 degree. I honestly didn’t realize…
Wind and ocean currents make Western europe way warmer than Canada for a given latitude. Ottawa is only about 45 degrees north, same as Paris. Most of England is further North than that.
Paris is almost 49 degrees north. Even Ottawa is closer in latitude to Milan