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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

There's an expert that specializes in vitamin D toxicity cases and regularly posts here. She sees cases at less than the 10000IU daily dose Fauci takes.

I would be hesitant to go above 4000IU daily without monitoring blood levels every six months or so.

Its winter here in Canada, I'm taking 3000IU per day. I drop that to 1000IU in the summer. I'm not a doctor, not recommending you do the same. Just sharing.

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Obvious warning but there's a lot of name dropping and I'm not sure what leads people to think Fauci 1) takes 10kUI or 6kUI per day 2) that it's the right dose for them 3) that they can make conclusions on what to do with their health based on a forum.

Get your blood checked, get recommendation from a doctor... before supercharging your blood with calcium & other fun stuff...

The 10,000 number is hearsay I overheard as a family member listened to this english nurse who professed to taking 5,000 himself. - https://youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching

I imagine someone reading this may not have healthcare coverage, but bloodwork can be cheap! Save up! Please be cautious

> I would be hesitant to go above 4000IU daily without monitoring blood levels every six months or so.

I did that for a little while (though the nurse practitioner at my work clinic wasn't too keen on signing off on non-medically indicated blood tests). IIRC, I was supplementing at 5000IU a day and after a few months wound up with a higher blood level than I was comfortable with, based on the ranges that came with the tests. After that, I reduced down to 2000IU a day or less.

I've been much less into supplements in general, but I only take 2000IU irregularly now.

Her post about someone with serious health problems with over-dosing vit d (in this case, just 5,000 UI):

https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-2-shannon-s-st...

Her post about vit d in general:

https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-1-back-to-basi...

> 5000 international units (IUs) daily. Five years later

Five years. Of 5000 IUs per day

Five years. Of more than 10x the EU RDA (and maybe 5x more than the US RDA, still)

But please tell me again how easy it is to overdose

I admit I didn't make that clear, the point was 5k UI is not healthy to take long term. But you build a supplement regime around it, and then just keep taking it for years. That's how easy it is.

And in another thread a guy was saying his daily D3 was 20,000 IU a day as if it was perfectly normal.

I was found to be extremely deficient in a blood test and personally been prescribed 10k UI, or maybe even 50k I can't remember, but it was a weekly tablet for only 6 weeks.

Just sharing too: I was taking 3000IU per day like you and noticed really positive changes to my mood and general wellness by increasing to 9k (my pills are 3k each).

But since seeing the alarming articles on HN I reduced a bit, and I'm thinking of getting my blood tested.

Yes I read that report and was not convinced. One anecdote. Not in a peer reviewed journal etc.

If you do take Vitamin D, variant D3 is by far best, and it may be wise to take vitamin K2 as well to avoid calcium metabolism issues (calcification).

The problem is TIME. Taking 10,000 IU for a medium amount of time will very very likely be fine.

But due to fat solubility and therefore slow build up in the body, you are increasingly growing towards toxic levels over a long time.

The body can only regulate vitamin D before synthesis, after sunlight exposure. But if you take already-synthesized vitamin D, that regulation won't kick in and you're free to get hypervitaminosis.

Time in combination with individual biology are what brings issues here. Get blood work done (it cost me 30€ in Germany but was combined with 2 other tests).

On the one hand yes you could take it for a short time, but on the other why take excessive doses at all and risk falling into a bad habit? When there are lower doses that are both effective and safe?

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