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Comment by alyandon | Hacker News Reader

I was diagnosed with low serum levels of vitamin D so I take daily supplements. The general guidance for my condition is 1000 IU daily.

At one point in time, I discovered I had been taking 5000 IU/day instead of 1000 IU/day for about 180 days because of the bottles being identical except for the dosage printed in Flyspeck Times Roman 4pt. Fortunately, I alerted my doctor and a followup blood test confirmed I was still in normal range. Scary to think how that could have been a much more serious problem if I were more sensitive.

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4000 UI is recommended for adults by many doctors.

https://vitamindforall.org/letter.html

I take 5000 UI D3 daily from October to March and blood test are fine. I wouldn't take it during sunny times if you spend decent amount of time outside.

Yeah, it's vital to be careful with these vitamins

Yea, the dosage and labeling for sure needs work. I see 2000 IU doses regularly sold in stores and the bottle says you can take 2/day. Obviously no doctor would recommend that for anyone not sick. I also get regular blood tests since, I'd guess most people using supplements do not.

> Yea, the dosage and labeling for sure needs work. I see 2000 IU doses regularly sold in stores and the bottle says you can take 2/day. Obviously no doctor would recommend that for anyone not sick.

That is simply not true. Doctors do recommend 2000-4000 IU for healthy patients all the time.

I should clarify by what I obviously meant that doctors would not recommend that as a DAILY dose - daily implying long-term use is okay.

> I should clarify by what I obviously meant that doctors would not recommend that as a DAILY dose - daily implying long-term use is okay.

Yes, and I'm saying that this does in fact happen.

Concur - I was diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency and my doctor prescribed an initial regimen of prescription tablets at 50,000 IU and then suggested 3,000-5,000 IU daily.

Might also depend where you live. My doctor did as yours, but I live in northern New England where we don't typically expose our skin to the sun for months at a time. Perhaps doctors closer to the tropics assume at least a low level of sun exposure?

I was prescribed 3-5000 iu daily and then I changed doctors. When I asked about continuing the vitamin the new doctors said "I won't recommend doing a test because almost everyone has low vit d levels, even with daily supplements. Just keep taking the pills. As long as its not a very high dose you should be fine".

My wife has a different doctor who does regular vitamin testing, she was prescribed 5000iu and a year and a half later her tests barely read "normal", still being on the borderline.

Supplements never replace beeing outside exposed to sun where your body got vit. D naturally.

This is what I've been told to take by my provider, and I've been taking it for at least 5+ years.

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