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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

#101

Post by annzabelle »

atahanacar wrote: post #67

Medical doctor here. Please don't get health advice from hn comments. As a matter of fact, I advice against reading anything about health on hn, as the risks of dangerous misinformation far outweigh any useful information you might learn here.

There was a thread that touched on lyme disease recently, and there were a ridiculous number of comments going down pseudoscientific rabbit holes about people who'd somehow gotten chronic lyme in places with no endemic lyme disease and that the only ways to fix this were chronic antibiotics and hyperthermia chambers.

HN often suffers from the trait of people who are really bright in one area assuming that that means they are really knowledgeable in areas they don't know much about.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#102

Post by PierceJoy »

written-beyond wrote: post #8
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.

My life changed after I got tested for vit D and started talking supplements. I was severely deficient. I am now sufficient and everything changed for me.

How do you know the changes aren’t placebo?

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#103

Post by quickthrowman »

torstenvl wrote: post #53
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…

> loading up a construction site with more materials than are needed shouldn't automatically be assumed to be good It is almost universally recognized as good to do exactly that. It's better to have one planned extra trip to return excess materials (if they can't be used on the next job) than to have multiple unplanned trips when you unexpectedly run out of this or that.

Definitely. I ordered material to replace the balusters on our shared family cabin with horizontal stainless steel cable deck rails and ordered 5-10% extra for all of the various fittings, cable, as well as a backup swage tool.

One of my uncles asked why I’m budgeting for an extra $150 of material we won’t need. I asked him how much it would cost to get us all up here for another weekend to finish if we needed extra parts. The answer was “more than $150” and he understood.

It’s even more crucial to keep enough material on the jobsite when you’re running a project and paying $140 an hour for an electrician.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#104

Post by skyberrys »

The charts showing vitamin D not helping, but also slightly hurting make the topic more relevant. The title is almost too flippant of the conclusions which is don't just take more than necessary,because it's likely to actively cause harm not just slightly increase your vitamin D.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#106

Post by _0ffh »

rbjorklin wrote: post #93
nullc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took 2000IU (+K2) a day for many years in between testing my blood levels and still had Likewise, 23ng/ml while taking 2000iu/day of dry vitamin-d. Switched to 5000iu +K2 in MCT oil, -- 8 months later I'm at 64ng/ml.

Any noticeable difference how you feel health wise? Energy levels? Mood? Sleep quality?

Not the same person here, but a data point nonetheless. Before supplementing D3 I had a cold basically every year, sometimes twice a year. Since I brushed up my levels I average 1 cold in 6 years.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#108

Post by gblargg »

OutOfHere wrote: post #76
gblargg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for breathing oxygen, if you don't get it you'll die, but for most people oxygen supplementation would not be worth even knowing about.

That's an absurd analogy. Vitamin D is a vitamin that is in large part derived from significant sunlight exposure. Vitamins are essential by definition. Sunlight exposure is highly insufficient by historical standards. This is why supplementation is absolutely necessary in almost everyone who is not a full time outdoor worker. In contrast, the air contains oxygen which is sufficient for most people with normal lung f…

If most people have a significant Vitamin D deficiency, then I agree that my comparison was absurd.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#109

Post by bakul »

annzabelle wrote: post #94
galleywest200 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be why evidence suggests that redheads synthesize Vitamin D more efficiently? Red hair is more prevalent at higher latitudes (I think). Can redheads produce Vitamin D in these darker conditions while others cannot do so effectively? https://www.sciencealert.com/evolution-favored-genes-linked-...

Pale skin in general helps synthesize Vitamin D. The less melanin you have the more you absorb, this is why lighter skin happens at northern latitudes. Darker skinned people are more likely to need to supplement it.

Darker skinned people in northern latitudes. Made worse for vegetarians like Ramanujan in England.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#110

Post by Etheryte »

nostromo wrote: post #78
persedes wrote: post #74

Not in the field, but every time vitamin D studies come up I am reminded of the one that called out how current recommendations are based on faulty math (confusion on how to combine different sized studies confidence ranges ) and miss the mark significantly (and a lot of studies are based on those recommendations...) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5541280/

To save people the click: the study says that the recommended vitamin D intake is much too low.

Honestly you don't even need to know the recommended number. In many countries you can get tested for free, and if that's not the case for you, getting tested usually costs in the ballpark of a box vitamin D supplements. Measure and only then supplement, then measure again later. You don't need to fly blind.
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