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Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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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