Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have your own organic garden this is a pipe dream. A fruit or vegetable that have traveled thousand of miles before being delivered to you has almost no vitamins left in it and probably didn't have much to start with considering soil depletion. I believe (emphasis on believe) that supplementation is necessary even if you "eat right".
Turns out, not true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24006751
The Big Vitamin D Mistake
451–459 of 459 posts
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
IU are used whenever a particular vitamin has multiple forms with varying levels of efficacy [0]. Or it may be used when the typical quantities are measured in inconveniently small units. 1 IU of cholecalciferol is 0.025 micrograms. If you supplement vitamin D at hogh doses, make sure you use cholecalciferol rather than ergocalciferol. The former is naturally synthesized in your own skin, whereas the latter is produc…
Where can one go to learn about different forms of vitamins and the safe&recommended doses for each?
That said, the only way to measure a safe dose of a vitamin is to perform medical tests before and during a dosing regimen to ensure that you are neither under nor over the target levels of the vitamin in your body.
Medical science is not yet reliable when it comes to defining target levels of vitamins in any individual's body.
In general, for all body dosing regimens, the goal is to survive the dosing changes without dying first, and to produce the desired result second. If you are not treating a specific symptom and instead wish to simply calibrate your blood levels to "optimum", be warned: There is no optimum, period full stop.
For example, if you increase your vitamin D levels precisely to a target amount with careful blood testing and supplement regimes, then your risk of death from sunlight exposure may increase if/when the levels of sunlight you're exposed to shift significantly (due to work, weather, or travel). Some will immediately object that the increase in risk is vanishingly small. You are irreplaceable. What level of risk of death of acceptable to you?
Soylent calibrates their food product to 100% of all doses specified by the US RDA for healthy adults. It's generally assumed to be a safe set of targets, though some would say that it is too low in many respects (while missing the bigger picture of the 'pick one' conflict between society-level dosing and individual-specific dosing), and others would say that it is too high in many respects (while missing the bigger picture of the 'pick one' conflict between increased risk of side effects vs. increased risk of malnutrition).
There's a good reason why everyone ends up at the same sentence, and I'm going to provide it now:
Seek advice from a medical professional before consuming supplements. If you are unwilling to do so, get a med-alert bracelet and keep a summary of the past year of dosing changes in your wallet. It may someday save your life. If you are unwilling to wear a med-alert bracelet and keep a log of your self-alteration efforts, consciously accept that you risk death if unintended consequences occur.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#453>>This piece of news is a literal "copy-paste" of the abstract of the article "Big Vitamin D Mistake - BVDM"
BVDM is an article published by a Greek group. About the population from Finland.
BVDM has 2 premises and 2 conclusions.
>Premise 1: There is a correlation (not causation) reported recently in Finland of country-wide vit. D supplementation and lower Diabetes Mellitus type 1 incidence. >Premise 2: There was a study published in America (Meta Analysis of All Cause Mortality and Vitamin D - MAACVD) that investigated deaths that had the lab values of vitamin D available. The main finding of the study was: Vit. D levels of >30ng/mL is probably better than THESE ARE THE PREMISES AND NO MORE. Here are their magical conclusions:
>Conclusion 1: The right level of vitamin D is 100ng/mL. This is apparently extrapolated from a subgroup analysis in MAACVD. I find this extrapolation shocking because: 1- this finding wasn't considered significant enough to be published in the abstract by the original American group. 2- subgroup analyses shouldn't be extrapolated. >Conclusion 2: in order to make sure everyone gets this alleged "correct vit. D levels", here are the doses of supplementation that everyone should get.
>> As you can see, the conclusions are far outside the realm of possibilities offered by the premises. What the Greek authors did was nitpick a couple of minor points in some random published studies and synthesize them into a magical conclusion of how much more Vit D everyone should take (more than 3x the current recommended amount in some ages).
This is sensationalism. I'm sorry to see such poor material to be presented as science by "scientists" and "scientific journals".
>>Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*PS: I wasn't able to read the MAACVD full article, it wasn't free online. In these kinds of articles, the axis of the study is presented in the abstract, and the most significant findings are never left out. If someone has access to the full text, please share it with me and this forum.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is similar to my lived experience. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's 3 years ago. I was lucky to find a great doctor that specialized in it. He put me on 15000 IU / day for 3 months because I was so severely low in addition to having high antibodies. Within 3 months my levels were so much better. I still take 10000 IU / day along with selenium, iron, fish oil and good diet/exercise and all my levels have been in…
Could you write a bit about the role of selenium in your treatment? Thanks.
I don't want to give any kind of medical advice especially without knowing the situation of others. If you are concerned though, it doesn't hurt to get blood work done. Following are the common things to test for if you think you may have Hashimoto's or thyroid issues.
Vit D, Ferritin, Thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPO), Thyroglobulin antibody (TGAb), Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), Free T4 Test
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#455If you're looking for a better way to get vitamin D from supplements, try drops instead of pills. Each drop contains ~1000 IU, so you could get around 40,000 IU with just a dropper-full... For most of us, a week's worth of 40,000 IU/day could really be a boost. "Taking 50,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity. This level is many times higher than the Recom…
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recommend 1000 IU drops. They contain 1000 IU in a single drop, literally. You can get them off the shelf at my local health foods co-op. I've taken 40,000 IU before in a single day (I read that was a safe upper limit for most people). It felt amazing. It also helped me process built up emotions from winter darkness and depression. That day I took 40000IU I literally wept, then felt relief like none other, and a li…
Be careful with that kind of dose! To compensate for insufficiency, it's totally OK, but I wouldn't take it daily. You may start suffering from calcification of the bones. This cannot be undone.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>I know it sounds downright crazy, but it's possible that someone who's studied medicine and practiced it for years, actually knows better than random anonymous forum users. As the link in the OP actually denotes, no, that's not always the case. Bodybuilders and performance trainers - as well as Soviet Union sports scientists - have known for decades that Vitamin D supplementation is vital. This has been rejected by…
The difference is that when medics suggest a certain amount of vitamin D as optimal, they do it because they have done the research. When bodybuilders do it, it's just an article of faith for them and not something you should follow. It is always possible to arrive at a correct conclusion through entirely incorrect reasoning. Or, as the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day.
Homeopathy is crap. But bodybuilding/powerlifting/athletic training often finds the answers well ahead of peer-reviewed science.
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprisingly few problems. Wife has been doing 80k a day for the past few years and have help tremendously with her auto immune decease. If you're going to do high doses, stay away from anything with significant amount of calcium in your food (dairy, nuts etc)
80,000 IU is a terrifying number for daily intake. Did you mean 8k and not 80k?
Re: The Big Vitamin D Mistake
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best „normal“ dietary source is Gouda cheese, and almost an order of magnitude better, Natto (though that’s hard on the taste buds).
What is Natto?