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Comment by lambdaba | Hacker News Reader

- vitamin D (at least 20-30K IU in the cold months)

- magnesium chloride (5-10g/day, 625-1250mg elemental magnesium), great on its own, indispensable with vitamin D which uses it up as co-factor

- omega-3s (in high doses), probably better a high EPA/DHA ratio as you don't need that much DHA and EPA is more anti-inflammatory

- astaxanthin (great for sun protection, antioxidant)

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I've heard of these high dose Vitamin D regiments, and I have to ask, how and where are you getting such high doses?

I take 2 tablets of 1000 IU per day, alongside a magnesium citrate tablet. What am I missing? You're not taking 30 tablets a day are you?

I don't take such a high dose (I was on 2000IU a day and got the point where it was causing my heart to race and I had to back off), but I take a vitamin D supplement where a 1000IU dose is 3 drops of liquid from a dropper. It would be easy (although very expensive, and IMO not advisable) to take a large dose via this method.

I have a suspicion most people taking such a high dose (over an extended period of time) must be using a poor quality of vitamin D that means they're not actually absorbing that much. But that's just speculation.

There are plenty of brands dosing at 5K, 10K, and even 50K IU.

That 1000IU is common but very underdosed. IIRC the 400IU RDA came out of some error, it's 4000IU now, but I think even that is underdosed, with many people recommending 20K as the benchmark from what the body with sufficient exposed skin produces in 20mins in the midday sun.

Isn’t your body producing it in a different form though?

I don't think so, D3 is the animal form, which I didn't mention but it is, of course, the one you want and not D2, which does have some issues. Otherwise, I think it's more a matter of vitamin D biosynthesis also having other effects that are not resulting in just the synthesis of vitamin D.

30k does sound a bit crazy but maybe it works for parent. I was taking 4k IU during colder months of WFH and after a few months had to reduce it because I was getting close to the upper acceptable limit (starting from low levels). It's important to calibrate with regular tests.

If you are in Canada, the government only allows 1000 IU maximum sold over the counter. :-(

In Turkey you can buy a 300k IU dose for, what used to be, around $1-2. It is called Devit-3 and is sold over the counter.

5000 IU drops based on vegetable oil.

X drops for X * 5000 IU.

> - vitamin D (at least 20-30K IU in the cold months)

I hope you're getting blood tests, as this is enough to put most people into Hypervitaminosis D range if continued for long enough.

More is not always better when it comes to supplements.

I know where you heard that, but it's really not. Well, not if you don't already have some issue that would lead you there. Plus the symptoms of hypervitaminosis D are obvious (constipation, thirst...). There's stories of people getting hypervitaminosis D after, like 2-3 weeks on 1 MILLION units per day. Probably still a good idea to add vitamin K2 to that, but I already get a lot of it in my diet.

And you can also easily more than 20KIU vitamin D by sunbathing.

Not really [1]:

> The evidence is clear that vitamin D toxicity is one of the rarest medical conditions and is typically due to intentional or inadvertent intake of extremely high doses of vitamin D (usually in the range of 50,000-100,000 IU/d for months to years)

[1] https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(15)...

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