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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

#191

Post by [deleted] »

Dansvidania wrote: post #186
TeMPOraL wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason for this is that the sun is at a low angle, so it hits more of your body than it does when the sun is overhead - like you'd get in Australia. This also means that while you need some sunscreen during the day - from about 10 to 5 - it doesn't burn as much. Not sure if I parse this correctly - I'd imagine you need more sunscreen at "low angles" due to more severe and longer exposure? Low angle -> more body…

at lower angles the sun light needs to go through a much bigger "cross section" of atmosphere which greatly reduces its energy. This is why noon sun is the most dangerous.

[deleted]

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#193

Post by owenversteeg »

I have made this comment on HN many times [0] now but: it's the goddamn sunlight.

Sunlight has many pathways in the body, and increased vitamin D levels are just one of those pathways. Swallowing one element of a many-element pathway cannot simulate the human synthesis of vitamin D! This should be obvious! Your car might not run because of bad needle bearings, but the solution is not to add them to the gas tank! First, you must always understand.

Sunlight / vitamin D is an especially aggravating issue because we have increasing amounts of research on how sun exposure improves general health. Sleep quality and regularity, mood, cancer incidence (as the article notes), eyesight, skin conditions, overall mortality, virtually every part of human health is improved by going outside. And when I say "improved" I mean improved to such a degree that it would blow 95% of prescribed drugs out of the water. See, for example, the Melanoma in Southern Sweden study where the highest sun exposure cohort had _half_ the all-cause mortality of the lowest group. Unfortunately the Western medical establishment is thoroughly captured by industry and you can't sell a pill that makes you go outside.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42326209

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#194

Post by l23k4 »

HerbManic wrote: post #77
cute_boi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, you do need daily protein but for most people nowhere near as much as they are taking in. You see these protein bars and some of them basically have a full days worth of the stuff and that is before your other meals come in. There is the YouTube channel 'Subway takes' where people have about a minute to argue a point of view, usually very funny takes as well. There was one that was 'The Protein fad is basically…

>Yeah, you do need daily protein but for most people nowhere near as much as they are taking in.

I don't know, USADA is about as conservative as it gets and they certainly recommend a shitload of protein for for individuals trying to maximize muscle protein synthesis https://www.usada.org/spirit-of-sport/when-consume-protein-m...

>You see these protein bars and some of them basically have a full days worth of the stuff and that is before your other meals come in.

For a 100kg man that would be like 220 grams of protein, must be one big protein bar.

OTOH, at least your username fits ;)

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#195

Post by remix2000 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #193

I have made this comment on HN many times [0] now but: it's the goddamn sunlight. Sunlight has many pathways in the body, and increased vitamin D levels are just one of those pathways. Swallowing one element of a many-element pathway cannot simulate the human synthesis of vitamin D! This should be obvious! Your car might not run because of bad needle bearings, but the solution is not to add them to the gas tank! Firs…

Here in northern Europe, there just isn't enough sunlight to not become deficient, so a vitamin D supplement is a must.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#197

Post by noduerme »

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…

The Mediterranean diet itself has a lot of health benefits interrelated with the ones claimed about fish oil.

But just as a human experience, the first time I ate cod livers, it was hard to accept. Then I started spreading them on toast for breakfast, and realized that they were quite delicious, but very very much an acquired taste (and I eat almost everything).

As far as Vitamin D, there does seem to be a correlation between deficiency and severe coronavirus disease

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/15/5/733

[edit] to say, I love chicken and cow liver, but it took awhile to get a taste for fish liver. Pork liver, however, is putrid. I don't think I could eat that again.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#198

Post by kakacik »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #166
codethief wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun in northern countries in summer is less intense?

Yeah, kinda. I moved from Indiana to Norway - Trondheim, which is about in the middle of the length of Norway. During the summer, I can read outside at night even though the sun technically goes down for about 4 hours in June. It never gets darker than twilight. A few clouds means you might just have sunset all night. The sun does get surprisingly hot and very warming if we happen to have a sunny day. Jacket in the s…

This low angle situation must have been experienced by every adult I imagine, its just about being outside before dawn and feeling how sun's warming effect on the body is much stronger than few hours ago even though air temperature itself might have been higher before.

Since it hits body more perpendicular its not rocket science, I realized this around age 10 myself and I am not the brightest in the pack.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#199

Post by Gareth321 »

deepsun wrote: post #192

I don't understand why literally everyone I know are diagnosed with Vitamin D Deficiency. Even living in sunny California. Wasn't human biology adapted for it in the last 40k years? I understand we spend more time indoors, but literally everyone?

We evolved to be in the sun for much of the day. We no longer do that. Many of us barely go outside at all anymore. Light skin is an evolutionary adaptation to mitigate the issues related to this in higher latitudes, but it's not match for modern indoor lifestyles.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#200

Post by waffle-fry-pan »

tl;dr: The combination of vitamin D/MG cured heart arrythmia and mild depression I suffered from for almost 20 years, so I do not think it is worthless.

I had ventricular extrasystoles for a very long time of my life (18-37). This is a mostly harmless arrytmia that feels like one beat out of the normal rhythm. Around 18, I noticed it for the first time. It came and went, usually I had this for ~3 weeks and then it was gone. Over the years however, I got more and more of those and at the age of 30, I had them ~70% of the year at a rate of 5-6/min. In parallel, I felt stressed and depressed. Not from the fact that I had those, I got used to that over the years, which was not easy.

The doctors I went to said: Harmless, learn to live with it, you will still get very old. Especially the five cardiologists but also the "normal" doctor I saw never took that serious at all. I kept a diary over the years and knew that those could fully go away and I had the feeling that it was somehow correlated with what I eat. Whenever I said that, the response was: "Unlikely, you just don't pay enough attention and do not notice them anymore". Treatment advice was: Live with it or get a catheter ablation done.

Then I then went to a different doctor who actually listened to me when I said they could fully go away. She tested me for vitamin D, B12, magnesium, potassium, iron and a few other things. It turned out that I had a strong vitamin D deficiency (12 ng/ml) and a mild MG/K/B12 deficiency.

Then I took some supplements (a bit of D/MG/K/B each). That helped a bit, but not always and not consistently, but I could definitely tell that there was a relation to taking something or not. I prefer a healthy diet over supplements, so I was not very consistent taking those and when everything was good I simply stopped. The fact that this did help, but not always, kept bugging me though and I wanted to figure out what exactly helped. Long story (~5 years of experimenting) short: It most likely was the combination of D and MG, taking one in isolation did not always improve things. There seems to be a mutual dependency between them, which also seems to be studied to some extend (I started to read med publications at some point, e.g. [0]), but I am a computer scientist and not a doctor so take this with a grain of salt and definitely do not just take stuff without measuring the actual levels first.

Today, I occassionally take supplements (still do not like the idea of taking them on a regular basis) and get my D level tested every once in a while. It is now usually ~30 ng/ml which is still a bit low, but the extrasystoles are fully gone (I am 44 now).

[0] Role of Magnesium in Vitamin D Activation and Function, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29480918/

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