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Comment by tzaman | Hacker News Reader

Coincidentally, just yesterday I spoke with a friend of mine who's working in a shop selling dietary supplements and she claimed that pretty much the whole western world suffers from a severe vitamin D deficiency. A few hous later, I ordered bottles of vitamin D and K (on Amazon, because it's significantly cheaper than her quasi-eco shop).

I'll see how it goes, I'm giving her a three-month lasting benefit of a doubt, because according to my Google research, what she says is true, but I'm probably taking a blood test before and after to see what's up - and I'll consult with my doctor about it prior to taking the pills.

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It's not my only source of information, but I generally check Snake Oil Supplements for these things: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-o...

Vitamin D has a pretty strong position for "general health, all-cause mortality."

It made me pretty happy to see coffee so high up there in a strong position (mostly for cardiovascular health).

I think the NHS (UK Health System) just announced this week they are recommending people take Vitamin D supplements, particularly in winter. I can't find the link now but I definitely read it and it was in the major newspapers etc. AFAIK the problem is more 'multi vitamin' pills than specific ones.

Fish oil for many years was one of the most well substantiated supplements. Then it came out that only people with the right genetics benefit from it, particularly the Inuit who participated in the fish oil studies. So now I've thrown my hands up and am trying to eat what I think is a reasonable, "balanced" diet while hoping for the best.

Vitamin D pills definitely worked for me, I had what I can only describe as "brain fog" while mostly being inside during the winter. On a whim I bought some Vitamin D pills off amazon and within a few days the difference in how I felt was significant.

I no longer take them every day but I pop one periodically if I'm more tired/irritable/fuzzy than I would consider normal.

That doesn't appear to be one of the effects of vitamin D (and deficiency doesn't cause any neurological effects). I suspect the placebo effect is more likely (it will definitely have a large effect on brain fog).

There are some places online that do list the type of symptoms I had as being down to Vitamin D deficiency. http://www.healthline.com/health/vitamin-d-deficiency

Given that at the time it was Winter in the UK and I'd gotten into a sleep pattern of being awake at night and asleep during the day, I think a Vitamin D deficiency was pretty likely.

Given that there is no scientific evidence of those symptoms, I suspect that site pulled it out of their ass. If vitamin D deficiency did cause those symptoms, they would be symptoms of ricketts.

>Given that at the time it was Winter in the UK and I'd gotten into a sleep pattern of being awake at night and asleep during the day, I think a Vitamin D deficiency was pretty likely.

Possibly (assuming you didn't eat much milk or fish). However your symptoms probably had more to do with your sleep pattern than vitamin D.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/07July/Pages/The-new-guidelines-...

They've been hinting at it for a while now, and the new advice came out in July.

Thanks for clarifying. I know it definitely hit the major newspapers/sites this week, who somehow screwed up the advice slightly, which the NHS then had to clarify.

Vitamin D yes, K should be okay for adults and children. Babies need K. Our kids both take D and the baby K.

You can OD on it so always read a label + take medical advise from a professional, not some random HN post :)

Source: my wife, pharmacist (a proper one, she has a doctorate).

I was told by my parents (GPs) that you have to try pretty damn hard to truly OD on vitamin D though - basically chronically overdose; a one-time peak-intake doesn't do much, since the amount of vitamin D we produce on a sunny day is orders of magnitudes more than the maximum amounts advised the boxes.

Does your wife agree? I'm always open to a second opinion.

> ...since the amount of vitamin D we produce on a sunny day is orders of magnitudes more than the maximum amounts advised the boxes.

In general I agree with your attitude but in the case of D, some of us don't make as much where we live as we would if we lived where our parents or grandparents are from. I.e. my skin is darker than the people who have historically lived at the latitude where I live; my Indian grandparents got a lot more sun than I do. My measured D levels are "low"

The reason I put the quotes around "low" is: my levels are low for the stated levels in the USA. But who were the study group? How wide a variation is reasonable? Nobody has determined that. It's like the height and growth charts we were shown for our baby -- they were determined in the mid 1900s by doctors who looked at WASPy New England kids. Hmm..

To be fair, these longitudinal studies are almost impossible to do.

As an adult, yes. But for kids it's much easier. They can OD on one of the little glass Orbas Oil sized bottles of it.

On the subject of drugs and kids: you have to be crazy careful with pills of any kind if you have kids. Both Paracetamol and Aspirin are deadly to kids in adult doses.

Not just any K Vitamin but the superior form K2

http://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2016/12/09/the-ultimate-vitami...

As a point of data, I have been taking Vitamin D supplements for a couple of years now. My blood levels have gone up from below the normal range to within the normal range; but they're still in the lower part of the normal range so I've upped the dose since I would like to get it up to the high end of normal. I'll see what the blood work at my next annual physical shows.

Just in case anyone isn't aware, vitamin D is technically not a vitamin but a steroid.

Steve Gibson has documented his research: https://www.grc.com/health/vitamin-d.htm

Steroids are a common class of organic molecules and don't preclude membership in the group we've labeled "vitamins".

Vitamins are a label we give, not on structure, but on function and our own ability to synthesize them.

Vitamin D likely wouldn't be a vitamin were we all still running naked in Africa, but that's mostly not the case.

Steve Gibson... well known health expert, ha.

As opposed to anyone else in this discussion?

How about just going on scholar.google.com and seeing what that dredges up instead?

It exists and it's not only painful to know how many people don't know about, but the people who trust anecdotal evidence, a small sample size (ding!) a random person with goods to sell (ding!) or healthwayfoodblogvitamins.biz.co

Not saying that the claim isn't true, but scholar.google.com exists and so do .edu, .edu.country, .gov and .gov.country

Hey me too. Same convo with a health nut friend. Only, I bought a Tespo (mainly because it'll easily fit into my daily routine without cause to remember multiple pills a day). I'm gonna keep a daily log and see how it effects my energy levels over the course of the next few weeks.

Hard to believe. We have fortified foods and it should be rather hard to catch a nutrition deficiency, even if your diet solely consists of cheeseburgers (This probably differs from country to country).

Vitamin D can be found in Fish, Egg and it's even added to Milk.

Our skin stops producing Vitamin D once it's synthesized about 10,000 IU.

The RDA is only 400 IU.

There's mounting evidence that a regular intake in the thousands of IU (or synthesis from sun bathing, depending on your skin tone, latitude, and cloud cover) has health benefits beyond keeping you out of the hospital.

Examine.com has a comprehensive summary of the current research: https://examine.com/supplements/Vitamin+D/

Depending on where you live, those can probably easily be fixed by just spending some time in the sun in the mornings and eating more greens. If you love avocado then it should be easy.

Supposedly you shouldnt wear long sleeve clothing and not take a shower frequently either too, since washing away your body surface oil reduces the effect.

Reasonable things to do in our tribal days, not so much nowadays. Much easier to spend $15 a year and take a vitamin d after your first meal.

I'm a huge fan of taking pharmaceutical shortcuts, but a small amount of daily sunlight gives you much more than a vitamin D tablet. There are benefits in mood, sleep, and eyesight. Plus the many fun things that can be done outside alone or with friends.

I used to think that going outside (and exercise in general) was something I had to "make time for" and spend energy on. These days I realise that going outside actually boosts energy. I work to live, not live to work.

I agree sunlight in general is important and I try to seek it out a lot. Being in an office with a good amount of sunlight is important for me. It's just when I heard that what is really needed for "good" vitamin D production made me realize that it would be too much of a relative sacrifice. It made me accept just using vitamin D pills.

Being outside a lot in your coat (because its cold) during the day will give you a lot of the benefits of sunshine, but it won't give you good vitamin D production despite all of the other benefits unfortunately.

That same small amount of sunshine also raises the risk for melanomas and skin cancer. Vitamin D supplementation makes sense.

Not necessarily; see radiation hormesis [1]. Small amounts can be beneficial even if large amounts are harmful.

We also know there's a link between more sunlight and less incidence of other types of cancer. It's still unknown whether this is mediated by Vitamin D or other mechanisms.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

30 minutes a day causes cancer? What did we ever do before long sleeves? Must have been an evolutionary miracle!

Whatever did we do? One possibility is that "we" got skin cancer at higher rates than we do now. Or at least we would have had we lived much past the age of thirty. And that's just one possibility that sprang immediately to mind, I'm sure there are others that are more sound were one to give it more than the brief milliseconds of thought that you and I obviously did.

You do know that thirty was limited mainly from infant mortality, war, and complications in childbirths, right? In particular, men could live a very long time. Often did.

That would be a very interesting experiment, please do blog about it and post it to HN. Some real world data on what this stuff does with you, even with sample size = 1, is very valuable if you go through stuff like blood tests.

I'd like to join the mailing list for the blog entry if you decide to make one!

Thanks for the idea, I think I'll do just that and post the link here!

I think this pretty much depends on where you live. If you get enough sunlight on your skin then there is no need for vitamin d supplements.

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