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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Vitamin D is not a true vitamin in that vitamins are defined as critical nutrients we cannot manufacture and vitamin D can be manufactured in the body (by most people). It also available to some degree in various foods. It often gets added to milk in the US by the manufacturer and certain fish oils are high in vitamin D, like cod liver oil.

People can make a point of adding more dietary vitamin D or making sure to get a little more exposure to sunlight daily. It is absolutely not necessary for this to only be addressed by buying supplements in pill form and that is probably not even a best practice for improving vitamin D status.

(Edited. Not sure if for "typos" or because "God, I hate auto-corrupt so much sometimes.")

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This really depends on where you are. For example, I live in Canada. In the winter, I only see the sun a few minutes a day. I start the workday in the dark and finish it after the sun has set. If I see the sun, I'm most likely while I'm in my car driving from my house to the grocery store during the weekend.

Keep in mind that sun exposure through a glass window will not be enough to trigger the production of vitamin D.

Unless I ate enough fish to make me sick, I'll get vitamin D deficiency. I have a lot of friends and family who are on prescribed vitamin D supplements, which are huge doses you take once a week or month.

Same here in Scotland. Apparently there's so little sunlight in winter here and it's so 'low quality' in terms of providing vitamin D that it's impossible to get enough from sunlight during winter here. The NHS actively encourage vitamin D supplements over winter.

Thank you for giving details about the kinds of circumstances that may mean supplements are warranted. But do note it only adds to my point. It doesn't actually rebut it.

My statement was already qualified: vitamin D can be manufactured in the body (by most people).

I'm aware there are people who have a legitimate need to take supplements for some reason. No amount of qualifiers is ever enough to prevent the internet from completely ignoring your qualifiers and acting like "You are wrong! And this doesn't apply to me!"

As a canadian, i find it amusing how basically my entire country is being dismissed as a non-representitive special case!

The vast majority of people do not live that far north. People who do should be well aware they are, in fact, "a special case" for purposes of dealing with vitamin D deficiency.

https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-longitude/

For the boat loads of people looking to nail me to the wall over my very mild and qualified statement, why don't y'all try to get creative and look up data on vitamin D deficiency in girls in Muslim countries and then come up with some way to imply I am a misogynist* or I am anti-Muslim or something as part of this really, truly ridiculous pile on of people acting like I've said something crazy.

* If you don't know, I am probably the highest ranked woman here. I mean, that never prevents people from assuming I'm some rapey, misogynistic man. But at least try a little harder and don't give me really low hanging fruit for rebutting your argument like "Actually, I am a woman." because that's so very tired for so many reasons.

The context here is English speakers, not the whole earth. The vast majority of people on earth to not speak English or live that far north (or south), but this is hacker news which is a different population: we speak (or at least read) English. Those populations are heavily skewed to Northern Europe (Germany is mostly too far north and they are as far south as English is common), North America (half of the US is too far north, much less Canada). There are scattered areas elsewhere of course (India, New Zealand, Australia come to mind, I believe all get enough sun)

Regardless of how valid the criticism is, there are eight comments jumping down my throat over a comment that already included a qualifier and further jumping down my throat over my saying "Yeah, I realize that. I did use a qualifier."

I don't intend to reply further to any of this silliness. The number of people who feel the need to state yet again that I am wrong is really just crazy. It has no basis whatsoever in any real need to clarify what is true here. If that was what was going on, it would have stopped when I posted my comment saying "Yeah, I covered that with this qualifier -- I realize supplements make sense for some people" after the first three comments overlooked my qualifier to act like I am wrong and stupid.

But I am done arguing this. If people wish to add another twenty comments urgently and strenuously repeating the point that "Due to some nitpick or other, you are so very, very wrong here!" they can have at it. But I'm not replying further to this completely ridiculous thread.

A qualifier, that is poorly written is not a “get out of jail free card” for being wrong. Those 8 comments are there to teach you a lesson. I hope you are paying attention.

I like to pick nits. No personal insult is intended, I thought your comment was very good, but I found a tiny nit to pick and since I was stuck in a car (my wife was driving) for several hours...

I hope you have arrived safe and sound at your destination.

On top of that the context is people taking vitamin D supplements worried about the supply chain. While im sure there are some people who supplement unnecessarily, the distribution of people who take vitamin D is definitely focused northwards.

Statements can be technically correct out of context while still being effectively wrong or misleading in context. It is hardly a nitpick.

If you had some evidence that the majority of people who take vitamin D supplements could get it from the environment, then I would agree its a nitpick. But that's very different than the majority of people in general.

Funnily enough, this doesn't appear to be true. Your "scattered areas" comprise a solid majority of the world's English speakers: India and Pakistan alone have almost as many English speakers as the US, and adding in the Phillipines tips it over. Similarly, Nigeria has more English speakers than the UK.

That is to say, I don't think it's accurate to say that the English-speaking population is "heavily skewed" away from sunny areas.

Sure, but:

> According to a 2011 study, 41.6% of adults in the US are deficient. This number goes up to 69.2% in Hispanics and 82.1% in African-Americans

That's not exactly "most people". That's for the US where a lot of states are very temperate and the sunlight is present during winter.

Imagine how bad it gets up north.

It's true that the body will produce vitamin D in the right conditions, but unless you get those conditions it won't. Taking supplements is the easy road, especially at prescription levels.

Vitamin D is not water soluble, so you won't urinate it out. This means that you can get prescribed an injection or a big pill and be fine for weeks.

Yes but at the same time surprisingly short amounts of sunlight exposure can do already large effects.

Also some food contains vitamin D naturally.

So while food supplements can be necessary it depends on the rest of your diet and if you maybe could do a short brake during the time the sun is up (like a short outside cofe brake ;=))

EDIT: To be clear this is not meant to discredit you. It's just that even for people living high in the north there are options. Through for some less then for others.

There is not enough UV-B in sunlight for your body to manufacture vitamin D when the sun is less than fifty degrees above the horizon. This means that for the majority of the northern half of the United States and all of Canada, you can't make _any_ vitamin D from the end of fall to the beginning of spring.

Vitamin D is also special in the sense that it's a hormone.

> People can make a point of adding more dietary vitamin D or making sure to get a little more exposure to sunlight daily.

Getting sufficient vitamin D from diet alone is difficult. UV exposure also has risks, which may be higher for some. The required exposure time is measured in minutes a day. If you are still deficient it may be better to supplement, rather than getting exposed to UV for more time.

Even during summer in the Northern hemisphere, one would need to be out in the midday sun shirtless for a couple hours each day to get enough vitamin D that way. It’s just not feasible for most people, and doesn’t work in the winter unless you’re the Iceman.

Vitamin D is not a true vitamin also because it’s not even a vitamin. It’s a misnomer. It’s a hormone!

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