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The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

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Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#61

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

smt88 wrote: post #23
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #4

I suspect that blood vitamin D is mainly a marker for how much outdoor exercise people are getting, and that it is the exercise rather than the D which is causal.

Maybe this is true if you’re only considering white people. Brown people can spend a lot of time outdoors and still be deficient, especially if their ancestry is from much a much sunnier region or lifestyle than the one they’re currently living in.

It has never been established that darker people require the same amount of D as lighter. The supplement industry plays on these fearmongering to boost sales.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#62

Post by raverbashing »

infinite_spin wrote: post #56
brandonb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty well-established science now that vitamin D is a hormone, not a true vitamin. Vitamin D binds a nuclear receptor that regulates roughly 1,000 to 2,000 genes (5-10% of the human genome). The "Vitamin D" moniker has just stuck around since it was named in 1922.

Yeah, it's just a holdover, the term "vitamin" originated from "vital amine", and vitamin D doesn't even have an amine group

Well neither does Vitamin C.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#63

Post by sbayg »

Aurornis wrote: post #7

This is a refreshingly balanced and honest analysis of Vitamin D studies. The strongest evidence for Vitamin D is in people who are severely deficient. Bumping up to a normal range can provide some improvements. The health influencers started noticing that the Vitamin D studies coming out weren't matching their original hype for Vitamin D, so many pivoted to trying to make claims that most people are severely deficie…

Baby aspirin was overdone too. Interestingly, the fish oil hype cycle has a much longer timeline if you consider the popularity of cod liver oil once upon a time.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#64

Post by fridder »

cj wrote: post #45
rzz3 wrote: post #19

Has anyone done a RCT of D3+K2? K2 seems to be important in the absorption of D3. Another aspect that bothers me with these studies is that we’re simply supplementing the vitamin D, seemingly without measuring the change in blood levels. I took 2000IU (+K2) a day for many years in between testing my blood levels and still had <30ng/ml and had to go up to 5000IU/day. I’d like to see some further study.

K2 is also known to prevent problems with calcium build up which can happen if Vitamin D is dosed too high. I personally would never take Viramin D without K2 alongside it.

One problem: folks that are on blood thinners shouldn't supplement with vitamin k

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#65

Post by asdff »

legitster wrote: post #26

Your body needs vitamins in order to form complex aminos to operate. But your body only needs to make so many of them - especially if you are an adult, not pregnant, or not suffering from a disease of some sort. The very premise that loading up your body with "excess" vitamins beyond what you need is already pretty fraught. Building a house without enough lumber can lead to long term deficiency - but loading up a con…

There would still be a ton of goiters if not for iodized salt, basically an obligatory vitamin intake. People had no good iodine source living inland where most anything they catch or grow is not going to have sufficient iodine no matter what it is they were eating.

I'm not sure what the ancestral iodine source might have been. Fishing villages perhaps along the coast? Hard to say how much coast was relatively populated given challenges of shifting shorelines and archaeological efforts. You can still reproduce laden with a goiter however, and that is enough to keep chucking malnourished humans somewhere on earth.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#66

Post by nradov »

brandonb wrote: post #41
rzz3 wrote: post #19

Has anyone done a RCT of D3+K2? K2 seems to be important in the absorption of D3. Another aspect that bothers me with these studies is that we’re simply supplementing the vitamin D, seemingly without measuring the change in blood levels. I took 2000IU (+K2) a day for many years in between testing my blood levels and still had <30ng/ml and had to go up to 5000IU/day. I’d like to see some further study.

TARGET-D is an in-progress study that supplements vitamin D based on blood levels (your idea).

I think that study is already concluded but the results haven't been published yet.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02996721?tab=study

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#68

Post by criddell »

js2 wrote: post #39
criddell wrote: post #29

This is great. I wonder if there's something like a patreon model where we could sponsor similar deep dives on other supplements? For example, I've been supplementing with nicotinamide riboside for a few years now. I stop occasionally and when I do stiff and sore hands and knees return and I get more headaches. I'd love to know if I'm deluding myself (placebo effect?) or there's good science that backs up my experien…

examine.com

Thanks!

The results from examine.com for nicotinamide are interesting, but not as focused or concise (or usable) as the vitamin D information in this posting.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#69

Post by cute_boi »

legitster wrote: post #26

Your body needs vitamins in order to form complex aminos to operate. But your body only needs to make so many of them - especially if you are an adult, not pregnant, or not suffering from a disease of some sort. The very premise that loading up your body with "excess" vitamins beyond what you need is already pretty fraught. Building a house without enough lumber can lead to long term deficiency - but loading up a con…

These days it is same with protein... Too much protein fads.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#70

Post by kccqzy »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #4

I suspect that blood vitamin D is mainly a marker for how much outdoor exercise people are getting, and that it is the exercise rather than the D which is causal.

I also suspect that the frequency of outdoor exercise matters even if the total duration of outdoor exercise remains the same. Subjectively, I feel much healthier when doing thirty minutes of outdoor exercise six times a week, than when doing one hour of outdoor exercise three times a week. But then of course, all the causal effects could have been caused by a different factor (say dopamine release) than vitamin D.
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