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Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

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Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#121

Post by jaggederest »

hinkley wrote: post #115
theshrike79 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that vitamin D doesn’t absorb the same way for everyone. If a 100 people take 50IU of Vitamin D, you get 100 different results. Some get enough from minor sun exposure and maybe eating a fish now and then. Others need massive doses to get any results.

If your doctor is not seeing results they’ll keep upping the dose and I’ve heard of some that sound like an attempt at assisted suicide. Most of us would get toxicity from some of the ones I’ve heard.

My family is in this group. We are poor absorbers of vitamin D, some of my elder relatives need 5 times the "safe upper limit" to have healthy blood levels. As long as you're checking your blood values routinely (and for both D2 and D3, not just one or the other), it's reasonably safe. Sort of like other prescriptions in general.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#122

Post by roncesvalles »

gwerbret wrote: post #100

Heh...this is a shady study if I ever saw one. -- Exactly 400 study participants recruited. -- Exactly 193 of 200 participants completing the study in each group (which, for a study administered in a community setting, is an essentially impossibly-high completion rate). -- No author disclosures -- in fact, no information about the authors whatsoever, other than their names. -- No information on exposures, lifestyles,…

My bullshit meter redlined as well.

> Incidence of ARIs was documented through monthly follow-up visits and self-reported symptom diaries validated by physician assessment.

This is basically impossible to accomplish for 386 participants who aren't in some form of captivity (e.g. incarcerated, institutionalized, in the military, or a boarding school). Nobody cares enough to maintain a "self-reported symptoms diary" and make monthly visits for some study. If they actually ran the study as designed, they would've have zero usable participants even starting from 400.

Saying nothing of the ethics of giving half the Vitamin D deficient patients presenting at your clinic with a placebo.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#123

Post by thaumasiotes »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #118
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indoors best invention since fire.

Doors are such an important invention that multiple unrelated animals have evolved modified body parts to serve as doors to burrows¹. Being able to store food is critically important for surviving low-food periods like winter without migrating. "Indoors" lets you store food without insects or other animals getting to it & stealing it. Fire allows for hardening clay, which lets you make a special tiny "indoors" called…

> "Indoors" lets you store food without insects or other animals getting to it & stealing it.

This isn't true of human doors; insects are very small.

We've had the technology to keep things in wax-sealed clay jars for quite a while, but I'm not aware that this was done with grain, where preventing spoilage would have been most valuable. Granaries are open to the air. (And devote quite a lot of effort to slowing the spoilage of the grain.)

If you wanted food that wouldn't rot, instead of keeping it in an airtight environment, you dried it.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#124

Post by lxgr »

slow_typist wrote: post #52
layer8 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitamin D isn’t technically a vitamin in the strict sense, because unlike the other vitamins the human body can produce it itself (by exposure to sunlight).

Dogs can synthesise vitamin C…

Sure, many things are vitamins for one species but not another. (In fact, every vitamin must be able to be produced by at least one species – where else would it come from?)

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#125

Post by lxgr »

wongarsu wrote: post #107
delecti wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And humans aren't dogs.

Most definitions of the word vitamin are not specific to humans. Wikipedia talks about "organisms", Britannica about "higher animal life", Webster about "most animals and some plants"

What is and isn't a vitamin by definition varies from species to species.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#127

Post by cj »

johnisgood wrote: post #79
theshrike79 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that vitamin D doesn’t absorb the same way for everyone. If a 100 people take 50IU of Vitamin D, you get 100 different results. Some get enough from minor sun exposure and maybe eating a fish now and then. Others need massive doses to get any results.

50 IU is nothing. 3000 IU is something. I have MS, so I need to supplement at least 10k IU. And yeah, it does not absorb well unless you eat some fat.

I took 10k iu via a multivitamin for a few months, and ended up with Vitamin D levels 5x higher than the maximum on the labcorp reference range. "Vitamin D toxicity"

It took many months to get the levels back to normal. Vitamin D is one of those things that once you overdose, it takes many months for the levels to slowly come down after you stop supplementing.

Be careful with Vitamin D!

The downside to having high levels is plaque/calcium deposits in arteries, if I'm not mistaken. Which can be mitigated by taking K2.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#128

Post by IAmBroom »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #123
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doors are such an important invention that multiple unrelated animals have evolved modified body parts to serve as doors to burrows¹. Being able to store food is critically important for surviving low-food periods like winter without migrating. "Indoors" lets you store food without insects or other animals getting to it & stealing it. Fire allows for hardening clay, which lets you make a special tiny "indoors" called…

> "Indoors" lets you store food without insects or other animals getting to it & stealing it. This isn't true of human doors; insects are very small. We've had the technology to keep things in wax-sealed clay jars for quite a while, but I'm not aware that this was done with grain, where preventing spoilage would have been most valuable. Granaries are open to the air. (And devote quite a lot of effort to slowing the s…

Dried food requires indoor storage.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#129

Post by hinkley »

jaggederest wrote: post #121
hinkley wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your doctor is not seeing results they’ll keep upping the dose and I’ve heard of some that sound like an attempt at assisted suicide. Most of us would get toxicity from some of the ones I’ve heard.

My family is in this group. We are poor absorbers of vitamin D, some of my elder relatives need 5 times the "safe upper limit" to have healthy blood levels. As long as you're checking your blood values routinely (and for both D2 and D3, not just one or the other), it's reasonably safe. Sort of like other prescriptions in general.

I heard about a guy who ordered a bottle and ended up with vitamin D poisoning, on one of those Ira Glass style podcasts. Turns out they forgot to compound it before sending it out so he was getting “cask strength” vitamin D. Sounded very unpleasant.

Re: Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels

#130

Post by IAmBroom »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #96
loverofhumanz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man suffered outdoors very much, for a million years. Man want both good of indoors and good of out outdoors.

Indoors best invention since fire.

Maybe better.

If I have to survive the night, overhead protection and thermal insulation is more important than a fire. Source: I've tried using both without the other.

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