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Comment by neuronic | Hacker News Reader

May I mention the following research on NCBI:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28768407

I will simply quote from the abstract:

> This could lead to a recommendation of 1000 IU for children <1 year on enriched formula and 1500 IU for breastfed children older than 6 months, 3000 IU for children >1 year of age, and around 8000 IU for young adults and thereafter. Actions are urgently needed to protect the global population from vitamin D deficiency.

Essentially, the recommended intake that pharmacists and labels tell you is outdated and founded in a statistical error. Adults are recommended to take >8,000IU every day and not ~1,000IU as still believed by many professionals who last updated their brainbase decades ago.

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I'll counter that with a quick quote from wikipedia:

> Recommendations stemming for a single standard for optimal serum 25(OH)D concentrations ignores the differing genetically mediated determinates of serum 25(OH)D and may result in ethnic minorities in Western countries having the results of studies done with subjects not representative of ethnic diversity applied to them. Vitamin D levels vary for genetically mediated reasons as well as environmental ones.

Basically, rarely is anything simple enough for a "one size fits all" approach.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D

I wouldn't say you 'countered' OP with that quote, but you did add some very pertinent and helpful info. From my perspective, though, your info is syngergistic with OP's, not counter to it.

While this is a very interesting paper, I'm a little bit wary of research articles that only have a single author. Are you aware of how accepted this viewpoint is in the wider research/medical community? For example, are there any medical bodies that currently actually recommend adults to take 8000 IU of vitamin D supplement per day, if they are at risk of deficiency? Conversely, are the medical bodies that do not make such a recommendation simply slow, or are they in fact disputing the above findings?

Reminds me of a seemingly smart and reasonable doctor I once saw for an annual check. Upon hearing that I'd been taking 3,000 IU, the guy completely Lost. His. Shit. I got a lecture about not going against FDA recommendations, which is 400 IU. The "outdated brainbase" phenomenon with doctors is too real.

It would be nice if doctors were compelled to keep up with the times or risk being driven out of the market.

Front end developers have to do so.

Compulsory exam on new important medical knowledge every two years!

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