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Comment by VladVladikoff | Hacker News Reader

I’ve personally been taking 7500 IU daily for many years now. Anecdotally (yes, I know, N=1) I have noticed I get sick less. I just did the math and apparently I’m taking the same dose as the participants in this article. I firmly believe the RDA is wrong, and the “high dose” of this article is closer to what the RDA should be.

I can’t find the article which caused me to originally start my 7500 IU regiment but there are many similar papers out now, such as:

>Soccer players that supplemented with 6,000 IU of vitamin D significantly improved their blood vitamin D levels, increased their free and total testosterone, and performed better on the 5 m sprint test compared to the placebo group. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7284423/

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Did a masters on Vit D.

Multiple overdoses of over 1 million IU have been recovered from without obvious long-term damage present in near term follow up.

Out of vitamin D’s many potentially clinically positive effects some of the clearest and best evidence is for increased muscle strength.

Personally I take between 5000-10000 IU D3 daily depending on exposure to sun intensity.

Care to share your thesis? Sounds interesting! What was your degreee in?

The hypothesis was: is it beneficial to supplement vitamin D to reach the maximum levels achieved through sun exposure year-round?

Conclusion: these types of studies did not exist at the time, but the risks of doing such studies would be minimal, and such studies would be able to test for the effects of higher dose supplementation that were lacking at the time. Potential benefits include increased muscular strength and bone strength.

> I’ve personally been taking 7500 IU daily for many years now.

And here I am debating whether increasing to 4000 was pushing my luck. I am also reporting less illnesses - or actually - no instances of being bedridden, which is an improvement over the previous flu seasons.

It depends on your sun exposure and kidney health. In the elderly with a compromised kidney, 4000 can push them over a sane limit. For most people though with minimal sun exposure, 4000-5000 is pretty good, and certainly will make them less sick. For optimal effect, stack with calcium and magnesium as citrate or better.

The linked study uses a daily dose of 6,000IU, and references two studies (13,26) which also tout the benefit of supplementing Vitamin D at a 3,000IU dose and a 3,332IU dose, both daily.

The two studies which are referenced (27,28) that do not find any significant benefits followed a different dosing strategy: 20,000IU and 60,000IU, weekly.

It seems like daily, large doses is the best method for supplementing vitamin D. I've seen it suggested to pair vitamin D supplementation with calcium and magnesium [1].

[^1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32972636/

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