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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being generally active and eating fruits/vegetables is like 80% of the work for being healthy. Except for the things that you get from sunlight, not diet. > If everyone is deficient, then it must not be that important. But nobody who lives in e.g. East Africa and spends a lot of time outdoors is deficient. So it's actually pretty reasonable to say that a modern indoor lifestyle combined with long winters would trul…

If everyone is deficient, how would you even establish a baseline of what counts as deficient and excessive? The way they do that is they sample the population and look at the ranges of the values and maybe look at when comorbitity issues arise within those ranges. But “everyone is deficient in X” is easily dismissed hokum.

Logically speaking, an affliction being extremely common or universal does not dismiss it as no longer being an affliction.

Many things about our society are extremely new compared to the conditions for which our bodies are evolved to be in.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#162
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

For what definition of “tolerate”?

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#163
post #17

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.

Yes, and to be concrete, you can do so at economical prices at https://requestatest.com (it's a lifesaver in many occasions, I've used it 4 times with great success).

Other Quest resellers like https://goodlabs.com/ are way cheaper. Eg "Testosterone, Free (Direct) With Total Testosterone, LC/MS-MS" is $159 on that website vs $15 on goodlabs.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun in northern countries in summer is less intense?

Come to Australia during the summer and watch how quickly you burn outside without sunscreen.

For non-Australians, that's burn as in "burst into flames", not "your skin goes red". Go to somewhere like Cairns and you can hear people crackling as they walk down the street.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#165

In case the author is here, you can find the Garland & Garland (1980) article on sci-hub. And if link is allowed https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/9.3.227

Linking to sci-hub for a known blogger may lead to undesired legal consequences in case the journal copyright mafia decides to make an legal example of you.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More hours of sun, but it's less intense.

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 shade, short sleeves in the sun even though it is 18C/65F.

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. It is less intense in that way - but it just feels different.

During December, days are 4 hours of very weak light.

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#169
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More hours of sun, but it's less intense.

Sure but i hide a lot more from the intense sun in spain then i do for the softer sun in sweden. In general i think it balances out quite well.

Does vitamin D synthesis require direct sunlight, or does it work with scattered light as well?

Re: The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone is deficient, how would you even establish a baseline of what counts as deficient and excessive? The way they do that is they sample the population and look at the ranges of the values and maybe look at when comorbitity issues arise within those ranges. But “everyone is deficient in X” is easily dismissed hokum.

Logically speaking, an affliction being extremely common or universal does not dismiss it as no longer being an affliction. Many things about our society are extremely new compared to the conditions for which our bodies are evolved to be in.

I think you missed my point. vitamin D levels in and of themselves aren’t an affliction. The “correct” level is established by looking at what everyone else has and also by trying to look for comorbidities. But the comorbidities are often hard to tease out; about the only disease we know is rickets. Everything else is weakly correlational for vitamin D.

How do you think they define healthy levels of other hormones like testosterone and estrogen? They look at the range of levels for them, they look to see when they think diseases start, and they say those are correlated and you should adjust.

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