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Comment by meddlepal | Hacker News Reader

Never purchased vitamin D before, if I were to walk into a CVS or Wallgreens what would I be looking for? Is this something you can just buy OTC?

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It’s otc. You want D3 variant, rather than D2. There is some disagreement about dosage - FDA RDA is 400IU daily for adults, but there are reasons to believe it is way too low.

Personally, I’ve taken 10,000IU daily for years with only positive effects (also Some K2 and Mg - they likely work in tandem). Deva Boone’s blog describes a case where 5000 IU /daily over years was too much for one of her patients. Do your own research.

There also reason to believe it should be take early in the day (say before 10am), as vitamin D is a derivative of sunlight (among others) and taking it in the evening/night seems to mess the body’s internal clock. (Google “gwern vitamin D” for more)

I am severely Vitamin D deficient due to a medical condition I have which prevents my body from absorbing VitD via the gut (which is how many consume it the most, via food you eat, not via sunshine). I’m on prescription strength VitD supplements and take weekly doses that are 50,000IU. I would not recommend self medicating with high doses of Vitamin D without consulting with a doctor because if you aren’t deficient like me, taking high doses like that can be dangerous as the side effects aren’t fun.

I have an actual minor deficiency as well and had accidentally bought the wrong potency (the bottles are identical except for the 4 pt flyspeck font specifying the amount) from the store and had been mistakenly taking 5000IU/daily instead of 1000IU/daily for about 6 months. When I informed my doctor of my mistake, he ordered a test and although my serum vitamin D levels were not outrageously high they were at the upper limit.

So definitely easy to "overdose" on vitamin D and as you point out - the potential side effects are not pleasant.

I did not bother consulting with a doctor before I started, mostly because my GP is an ultra conservative guy and categorically recommends against everything. But I do get regular Blood tests, and am Consistently at the high end of the “good” Bracket. (55 ng/ml? Don’t remember the exact number and don’t have it accessible this second)

> You want D3 variant, rather than D2.

Huhm, I have multivitamins that say "Vitamin D" with no hint as to which type. Any idea which it's likely to be?

Wikipedia has the scientific names.

Most likely D3. D2 is quite hard to find.

I've been ordering online for a while now, but on store shelves when I was looking it was 3:1 for the D3 -- with the D2 being significantly cheaper.

If it's hard to get D2 these days, that's much better.

Yeah, you can easily purchase it over the counter and it's very cheap. You can find it in the vitamins and supplements section. You should probably be looking for "high-strength" pills of 1000 IU. I won't say exactly how much you should be taking, but typical recommendations are of at least 1000 IU per day.

If you want to do around 1000 IU per day, it may be worth looking at multivitamins. For example, Flintstones Complete [1] chewable children's multivitamins are 800 IU per tablet. One or two tablets a day of those should have you covered.

If you want to take much larger doses of some vitamin, say 5000 IU a day of D, it would probably not be a good idea to do it via multivitamins because you would then be getting large doses of many other vitamins and minerals. At the very least you'd have to do a lot more research to make sure all of them are safe in larger doses.

[1] Just because you an adult doesn't mean you have to settle for the bland or worse taste of "adult" multivitamins. We are allowed to take flavorful children's vitamins too.

At least in the UK, just off the shelf.

Look for a vitamin section, there's probably effervescent soluble tablets in tubes, swallowable capsules in tubs, and swallowable gummy things marketed towards children in tubs.

'Multivitamins' also may or may not include it, check the back.

Buy it on Amazon. Get D3, it's very common and cheap. 1000IU a day should be enough for anyone unless you know you have a deficiency and were told that by your PCP.

A walk to the pharmacy (or any outdoor activity) with some skin exposed to the midday UVB rich sunlight might be a better approach than oral supplementation [1]:

> Adequate amounts of vitamin D can be produced with moderate sun exposure to the face, arms and legs (for those with the least melanin), averaging 5–30 minutes twice per week, or approximately 25% of the time for minimal sunburn.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Synthesis_in_the_ski...

During the summer at higher latitudes yes. But as the angle of the sun lowers, the amount of UVB getting through the atmosphere goes down. Also skin tone has an effect. Darker skin creates less from the same amount of sunlight.

It would look like a gallon of milk or a box of cereal. (Many foods are fortified with vitamin D. Check food labels for the level they provide.)

It depends on the milk. The two litre bottle of UK pasteurised milk in my fridge mentions B2 and B12, nothing about D. Is American milk UHT?

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