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Comment by drgoodvibe | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is built different. 4 years ago my bloodwork came back with an extremely low level of Vit D (so low the dr. Said they’ve never seen it that low. I live in Canada and work in an office so not a big surprise. But the severity and frequency of flu/colds lead me to investigate further including doing a genetic test. Turns out I am genetically predisposed to low vit d absorption. With dr supervision I began megadosing 4-5000 IUs daily. As of my latest bloodwork which was 3 weeks ago my vit. D is still just below average. What I have noticed is that the severity and frequency of my cold/flu is much lower than what it was pre-dosing. I know this is not placebo because often in the past if I got the flu it would lead to pneumonia. Since dosing I have not had a single case of it. My 2 cents N=1.

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> I know this is not placebo because often in the past if I got the flu it would lead to pneumonia. Since dosing I have not had a single case of it.

Just because something worked doesn't mean it wasn't a placebo.

Why would it be a placebo? Vit D can literally be measured, not?

When talking about placebo effect, it's the idea that the same thing could have happened taking a fake pill, just because the mind knows you are taking something that should have an effect.

Sure, the vitamin D in his blood may increase, but the anecdote of "it works" is about him getting sick less. And that could be a placebo effect and any sake pill would have had the same effect.

And the placebo effect can happen even when the person knows it's a fake pill.

Thank you for explaining that so well! I wasn't sure exactly how to phrase it.

You need about 1,000 IU per day to raise your serum levels by 25 nmol/L. The healthy level according to modern analysis is around 75-100 nmol/L.

What's important is that vitamin D is fat-soluble and will accumulate in your body. So if you do 5,000 IU/day for ever, your serum levels will likely just go up and up. 5,000 IU per day is not (as the other comments point out) anywhere a "megadose" — most people produce thousands of IU per hour when out in full sunlight — but it can eventually cause problems, including kidney stones and bone mineral density loss. (There's evidence that taking vitamin K2 together with the vitamin D helps maintain bone density.)

What's better is to do this for a while, then test your blood, then change the dose accordingly. Since the lag time is measured in weeks, it may take a while to find the right dose.

An interesting thing about the form from sunlight is that it can be stored at high doses safely and get converted into the active form as needed. And yes vitamin d supplements should be combined with vitamin K. D gets calcium into the blood, K gets it into your cells.

Do you have an authorative source on the vitamin K information? Not because I doubt it, I just want to read about it.

No it was from a supplement trade publication.

I don’t think we can call 4-5k IU’s of D3 a day ‘megadosing.’ megadosing is more like 50-100k at a time.

5000 is not 'megadosing' according to the latest research. It may well be on the low side of what is required.

He said 4 x 5000 daily, which is considered a large dose

They didn't use an x, they used a hyphen. > I began megadosing 4-5000 IUs daily

That reads as "four to five thousand IUs."

There is a form of vitamin d called 25 hydroxy that the body will immediately absorb. Some doctors used it during Covid because in 24 hours with iv treatment they could get a patient into the proper range.

Where did you do the genetic test? Is there something else than 23andMe?

Maybe consider a slightly higher dose. Also add magnesium and vitamin k to help the absorption.

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