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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

#151

Post by ChadNauseam »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #126
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…

It's pretty safe to assume all hyped supplements are pointless. Being generally active and eating fruits/vegetables is like 80% of the work for being healthy. > almost everyone is Vitamin D deficient This was the red flag that made me realize it was BS early on. If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important.

> If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important.

Most people are overweight. Does that make being a healthy weight not that important?

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#152

Post by anjel »

fridder wrote: post #64
cj wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vitamin k and k2 are not at all the same with respect to blood thinning

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#153

Post by bluGill »

floxy wrote: post #111
infinite_spin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably due to road conditions during the winter season. Imagine asking someone who isn't used to driving on icy roads to drive a large van full of equipment up through the Rockies

They plow the mountain passes in the winter time in at least Montana and Idaho. I'd be very surprised if they don't in Colorado or Utah.

They do, however the roads are, potentially icy, certainly after a storm, which means that you can't measure consistently, even if you're trying because some days the roads will be impassable.

If someone's not used to driving in snow, it'll be even worse. You should not let them drive if there's snow/ice expected in the next day; or the roads haven't been cleared yet. As someone who grew up in Minnesota, I can tell you that yes, we are better at driving in snow than people down south. However, we go in the ditch a lot anyway.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#154

Post by dashmeet »

kazinator wrote: post #118

I experimented with D3 supplementation up to almost a decade ago. I made some HN comments about it [2018]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638508 I ultimately stopped it because it seemed to cause lower back aches. (Pretty sure, bone/muscle not kidney!) Every time I went on the D3, my back would start to hurt. That repeated several times, enough to suspect a pattern. The cause may be similar to the itchy, ting…

Not medical advice.

You probably need to take vitamin d3 with k2 to avoid the calcium issues.

Edited to add link https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5613455/

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#155

Post by StayTrue »

petesergeant wrote: post #52
dyauspitr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a slight tangent, if people are unaware, you can pay for and get just about any lab test without a prescription in the United States.

You can get most tests (although often not genetic) in many countries, with Canada being an outlier in forcing you to get a doctor’s note for just about everything.

Really terrible in Canada. If you don’t have a family physician (like everyone I know), good luck making it through triage at the walk-in clinic because you want a test to see your baseline values or proactively check for deficiency. The “hack” is you can pay a naturopath to order tests but the tests are not covered by public insurance in this case (actually pretty expensive IIRC).

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#156

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

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 moral of the story here is just to do bloodwork on a regular basis (absolute bare minimum once a year) and respond accordingly. I take some supplements like vitamin D, but I only take what is empirically measurable. If I can't quantitatively measure the outcome, then there is no value and it's a woo woo solution. This isn't always going to be the best advice, but a vast majority of times it will be.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#158

Post by cobalt »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #151
yoyohello13 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty safe to assume all hyped supplements are pointless. Being generally active and eating fruits/vegetables is like 80% of the work for being healthy. > almost everyone is Vitamin D deficient This was the red flag that made me realize it was BS early on. If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important.

> If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important. Most people are overweight. Does that make being a healthy weight not that important?

most people can tolerate being overweight pretty well it seems

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#159

Post by jerlam »

zhivota wrote: post #132

Thousands of words and no mention of the obvious thing - testing whether sun exposure is beneficial or harmful. The article opens with the observation that southern states had lower cancer rates due to solar irradiance. But then we intervene by taking pills. Why not try to absorb through the skin, even if it means something like a tanning bed?

There are many nuances and people seem bad at understanding those. Too many are getting their information from "health influencers" and 30 second videos, which is why we seem to bounce between the two extremes of "everyone should take Vitamin D!" and "Vitamin D is overrated!".

Australia has tried to explain sun safety here, taking into account that Vitamin D is best obtained from sunlight:

https://www.cancer.org.au/cancer-information/causes-and-prev...

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#160

Post by Grombobulous »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #126
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…

It's pretty safe to assume all hyped supplements are pointless. Being generally active and eating fruits/vegetables is like 80% of the work for being healthy. > almost everyone is Vitamin D deficient This was the red flag that made me realize it was BS early on. If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important.

> Being generally active and eating fruits/vegetables is like 80% of the work for being healthy.

I suspect that a relatively low percentage of people in a solid number of wealthy countries meet these qualifications.

> If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important.

This isn't sound logic. Something being common doesn't make it unimportant or less of a problem.

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