Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

dkfz.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 249 posts

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#201

Post by MVissers »

nradov wrote: post #198
robertlagrant wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But alas, it turns out you have to do your own studies to improve life expectency with our western medical system It's a shame this possibility wasn't suggested before to you, but I have never seen any evidence that western medicine isn't one of the primary drivers of global life expectancy increases.

Western medicine is one of the primary drivers of global life expectancy increases only though vaccines, antibiotics, and trauma care. Other than that it has had very little effect: we could eliminate all other forms of medical care and average life expectancy would decrease only marginally. Public sanitation and food safety enforcement have had much larger effects. Where western medicine has had larger effects is in…

Really curious about your sources, because it doesn’t vibe with me at all (trained MD).

Statins have a phenomenal improvement in outcome on cardiovascular disease. So do many cancer drugs nowadays. Diabetes also has great improvement with good treatment.

Removing these would reduce life expectancy drastically.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#202

Post by dcow »

lm28469 wrote: post #160
dcow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (among other things) makes me wonder why we don't have better metrics and monitoring solutions for the human body. Your option is anecdotal self-diagnosis, or a full blood panel after seeing a doctor and convincing them that you need to be tested. It seems there's room for a product that monitors your health and sends you notifications when you need to address any metrics that are falling out of normal tolerance…

Half of the western world is overweight/obese (75%+ in the US), the vast majority of people are massively malnourished and under exercise The market for that is very small, most of the things that kill are known, the solutions are known, there is nothing cost effective, no magic pill Optimize for the basics, you have a long way to go before individual tests bring anything to the table. If you don't exercise vigorousl…

I'm not saying they key to good health is a big secret. I'm saying we're bad as a society or as human beings at objectively tracking this stuff and correcting negative trends often before it's too late. I've experimented with my body and nutrition a lot, with noticeable outcomes. You can't eat and know the next day that what you ate had too much refined sugar, or that it was organic and lacked toxins, just be how you feel. It takes weeks of not eating well before you notice anything and then months to years of the habit to gain enough weight to be obese. And some people eat like shit and feel great and don't get fat yet are wildly unhealthy inside. And some people are bigger than others and in pristine health. Diet is a huge part of health, yes, but there's more to health than diet... and how the heck does a person who's e.g. deficient in Vitamin D even know they are unless it's adversely affecting their mood. And even then how do they diagnose it and correct it when doctors are ~~bribed~~ encouraged with gifts to prescribe designer drugs for every problem.

My argument is that this information about your body should be more accessible so people are empowered to learn it and act on it of their own volition. If that were the case I bet we'd see less crack pop science surrounding diets and nutrition. Anyway your car analogy doesn't really hold. I can plug a $100 device into my car and diagnose what's wrong and read any data I want. It will tell me when I need to change the oil. I can look at the tires and see if they've worn past the safe level and replace them as needed. I can't do that with my body. The only consumer devices available are blood glucose and keytone test strips. There's no consumer "full blood panel" what would solve the problem the person I responded to shared. And consider women going through pregnancy, it's very very easy to be missing some key nutrients. It's common practice to supplement with pre-natals for the entire fertile phase of a woman's life. All because a lot of changes happen to your body that are hard to understand subjectively, so just spray and pray with vitamins and iron.

I'm sure this is at some level by design by the AMA. If people had access to low cost blood tests then we'd be undercutting a huge component of the medical industrial complex and the AMA does shady shit to keep doctor salaries high enough to justify all the schooling and certification fees.

Also where did you get that 75% number? Anecdotally it's not accurate. Obesity is higher than it should be but 3 of every 4 people are not obese even by the > 30 BMI metric.

So, again, why would more open access to baseline metabolic metrics be a bad thing?

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#203

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

agumonkey wrote: post #162
psychlops wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't usually defend the western system, but there are plenty of other systems out there that will caringly prescribe you snake oil. Simply understand that the western system is science based within a limited range. It is usually excellent if the cause of an illness is defined on a black and white test. If not, time for the patient to do the research.

This is the issue raised by comments like the one above. We understand that evidence based medicine handles statistical averages very well. But if you fall out of that, all you're left with is snake oil salesmen. There's a need for an intermediate layer of evidence yet "taylored" (and not kidney-costing if possible).

Ya, but I think most good doctors operate with a balance of probabilities framework. Yah, there may not be conclusive evidence showing it’s widely effective, but based on this case, it’s obvious the person isn’t getting enough sunlight, and they communicated that to the doctor, and so why not do a trial of something like vitamin d? It’s widely studied, has very few serious downsides, and is cheap.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#204

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #77
cscheid wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. There's a real-life example of an author group who got sufficiently annoyed at a reviewer requesting an inappropriate subgroup analysis: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Reviewers asked for the subgroup analysis; authors said "no, this is statistically nonsense"; reviewers said "yes, but we'll reject the paper otherwise"; reviewers said "ok, but only if you let us also spl…

The two signs bracketing the summer months (I presume this was in the northern hemisphere?). That's a potentially interesting finding. > inappropriate subgroup analysis No subgroup is inappropriate unless you know all of the values of all of the parameters. But sure, the intent they tried to demonstrate (take all sub-group analyses with a grain of salt) is a good thing to remember. Edit: To whoever downvoted me, time…

I’m not a stats expert, but it seems blatantly obvious that subgroup selection could be inherently problematic because how do you choose the groups in an effective and responsible way?

I mean, just the statement

> no subgroup is inappropriate unless you know all the values of all the parameters

seems implausible and unlikely.

In the one stats class I took, we talked a lot about how selection bias was a huge concern. Why wouldn’t Subgroup selection bias also be a concern?

I dunno, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m dubious.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#205

Post by loeg »

dmonitor wrote: post #154
loeg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blood panels are expensive and laborious to do with any frequency. Your body does a reasonably good job of monitoring and remediation on its own.

> Blood panels are expensive and laborious to do with any frequency I believe their implication is that there should be some engineering effort to reduce the expense and labor

You're faced with a fundamental problem of getting the blood out, though, which is always invasive and labor intensive. Or worse, you could embed a semi-permanent medical implant of some kind which would be obscenely expensive.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#206

Post by jjeaff »

nicenewtemp84 wrote: post #182
pvaldes wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoulder surgery should not be delayed. The probable retraction of some damaged parts is not a joke. Your friend could have been the lucky one in the pool, but there is also a possibility that in a few years the problem will grow and the surgery required will be much heavier and expensive. > and without surgery are back competing on the bike. My bet is that they are on painkillers for life

Are you saying that the doctor, upon closer questioning simply flopped and gave bad medical advice to my friend when they told him that yes it's reasonable to expect to regain full shoulder straight again without surgery? Because if so maybe my friend should sue? What is this blanket statement of "shoulder surgery should not be delayed" based on?

Doctors will often change their recommendation if patients express different priorities than the doctor initially assumed. Some people's priorities are no surgery unless absolutely necessary.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#207

Post by dcow »

dcow wrote: post #202
lm28469 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of the western world is overweight/obese (75%+ in the US), the vast majority of people are massively malnourished and under exercise The market for that is very small, most of the things that kill are known, the solutions are known, there is nothing cost effective, no magic pill Optimize for the basics, you have a long way to go before individual tests bring anything to the table. If you don't exercise vigorousl…

I'm not saying they key to good health is a big secret. I'm saying we're bad as a society or as human beings at objectively tracking this stuff and correcting negative trends often before it's too late. I've experimented with my body and nutrition a lot, with noticeable outcomes. You can't eat and know the next day that what you ate had too much refined sugar, or that it was organic and lacked toxins, just be how you…

Final related point: I establish care when I move to a new location but I have never had a medical provider do something like actively reach out and e.g. schedule me for yearly physicals. The closest thing is people reaching out to administer flu and covid shots. When I was younger I had to have physicals to participate in sports, but as an adult it's like I'm supposed to only reach out to doctors when a problem occurs. It's all reactionary. There's not a good pattern for establishing regular care and maintaining a preventative, nutritional, etc. dialog with a health professional. How do I bill "preventative nutritional consultation" to my insurance provider? We can do it for dental hygiene, why not nutritional and metabolic? The modern state of nutrition feels like pseudo science "neighborhood" gossip. We hated fat. Then we went organic. Then we disliked processed foods. Paleo. Then we hated carbs. Now that's not cool anymore either. When in reality it's probably all of the above.

My wife has thyroid problems and they're not diet related (at least we've been told). The whole process of advocating for her health has been exhausting. The resolution of her "case" was not driven by people we were paying to advise us and keep track of things. It was driven by us. We had to make sure medical records showed up in the right spots. We had to make sure appointment scheduling didn't get dropped. We had to reach out to make sure follow up visits and analysis were completed as advised in previous visits directly from the health professionals themselves. I've noticed differences by location where we've lived. It's better where we are now. But it's still very very reactive. Oh you got pregnant? Why didn't you have a conversation with us about starting prenatals? Did we check your TSH levels and make sure you were in a good zone? Shit like that is infuriating... (we did both for the record, but imagine the feeling if you answered no, which I would suspect is all too common).

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#210

Post by nradov »

huehehue wrote: post #187
kerkeslager wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a fairly similar experience with winter depression being cured by 10,000IU Vitamin D3 daily. I wouldn't say it's the single solution, which might be because my depression wasn't limited by season. I'm speaking in the past tense because my depression is largely managed by diet and exercise (rock climbing). The diet aspect is basically covered by the AFS in Table 2 here[1], with some additional natural probiotics…

Isn't 10,000IU way above the recommended limit? I went through a bottle this past winter (at the recommended dosage) and didn't notice a change in either direction, but was a bit confused during the research phase since everyone seems to use a wildly different dosage. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-Consumer/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamin-d/ edit: I also found https://news.ycombinato…

There is no real "recommended" dosage for vitamin D supplements. There is a recommended blood level of 50 nmol/L (20 ng/mL) - 125 nmol/L (50 ng/mL). Supplements should be titrated to reach that level, and the necessary dosage can vary tremendously based on ultraviolet light exposure, genetics, diet, and other factors.

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-Consumer/

Post reply on HN