trevorkoob

One interesting aspect of Vitamin D that is not regularly discussed is the photo-isomerization of Vitamin D into inactive isomers in the skin.

I think of it similarly to Beta-Carotene, in that consuming the "natural source" has no known toxic amount, while consuming processed vitamin A can be toxic in large doses.

Increasing sun exposure will not raise blood vitamin D metabolite concentration indefinitely, and we don't have good studies that accurately measure the amounts of Vitamin D and its photo-isomers and their concentration in relation to large doses of UV exposure.

Therefore, through sun exposure, people may be storing large doses of Vitamin D isomers in their skin, keeping their levels much higher than typically prescribed oral supplementation levels.

When I did my master's thesis on Vitamin D supplementation the conclusion was that vitamin D testing is wildly inaccurate, and we needed to have studies based on a target level - ideally one based around sub-saharan African community levels.

As for supplementation, sunlight has been estimated at providing up to 20,000IU per day, which I think (not medical advice due to the lack of study), from a mechanistic point of view, suggests an upper limit to daily supplementation.

You may have a point about processing, but I think by talking about "most people" you have invalidated any future points you may be trying to make.

For example:

"single natural ingredient"

not every cow is only fed with grass, and what about that grass, has it been treated, etc...

also

Neu5Gc

Mammal meat contains it, Humans have lost the enzyme (perhaps over that time since "the dawn of man"), it causes inflammation.

Looking at chimpanzee diets, I don't think our common ancestor was regularly eating burgers. More likely insects and leaves...which do not contain Neu5Gc.

As a self-proclaimed "healthy person", I'm not regularly eating either of these, but unless I know where the meat comes from, I'm likely sticking to the non-inflammatory burger.

I've stopped using photos entirely due to import bugs.

So much wasted time, now I just use image capture to import and organize directly.

Still get errors from time to time.

Apple needs to hire more quality control, their software integration is going from a positive to a negative.

Seamless integration was a large part of Apple's initial hook, and continues to be a part of their drive to push services, it should be a priority.

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.

Thank you for replying!

Curious.

Could you please share your physical activity level around the time of supplementation?

One of the most interesting studies I found in my research of vitamin D was a study in an elder care center where the patients were given massive doses of vitamin D.

The result of the massive doses were that patience had less hip fractures, but more falls compared to the control.

Now take this next part with a grain of salt because it’s me extrapolating from this result, but due to the known effects of vitamin D on muscle strength and also on bone density, I imagine that these patients were more active, but because vitamin D doesn’t give you coordination as well as strength they were falling more, their bones were more dense so they had less fractures per fall.

The point I’m trying to make and the reason I am curious about your own activity level, is that perhaps that there is a sensation or feeling of your muscles being more primed for action which can be agitating. Perhaps regular activity can link one’s sense of proprioception with increased muscular ability.

Apologies in advance if this is too personal of a pry.

Other than the value you are aiming for (I personally aim for the upper edge of the normal range), I agree with the immense variability in dosage, and also would like to mention imprecision in vitamin D bloodwork tests as well.

Thankfully throughout my Vitamin D research, I found low risk of overdose, and cases of immense accidental overdose that appear to have been treated successfully (mainly by stopping the over-intake).

Adding on this point, in my research I found blood serum testing to be wildly imprecise.

The conclusion of my study was that we should do more studies where we take regular blood level samples and adjust dosage to achieve a certain average level (near the upper level of the range).

5000IU D3 (D2 is about 1/3-1/2 as effective at raising blood serum levels) is a good starting point.

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.

testing lying down as we speak. Much more comfortable. The killer market for this device is business airline travel.

15 minutes of full-body UV exposure from the sun is estimated to provide the equivalent of 20-30,000 IU Vitamin D3.

There is a definite need for studies that better determine the effective dose for D3.

My research led me to the conclusion that studies should be done based not on standardized supplementation, but instead supplementation to a standardized blood serum level.

Makes sense that we have been cooking for a long time.

Our intestines look as though they have evolved around an environment of cooked food, and that takes many many thousands of years

Distributed ledgers are not a scam, and our true best hope for anti-corruption.

I would like every elected official to have all their income and spending listed on a public ledger.

True accountability of representatives to those they purport to represent will solve so many problems, both in terms of the types of people incentivized to become public servants, and also in terms of public understanding of spending and waste.

All this "crypto" is intellectual warm-up for what is to come, I'd highly suggest looking at rollups (what I would describe as ledgers within ledgers) which are delving into the true possibilities of next-to-zero cost of immutable transaction records.

Chiming in to thank you. The access to quality information on the web, specifically Ebooks, is what gives me hope for the future.

I tried the exact setup of this 1000+ hours person, having been excited by the concept of a monitor-less office for years.

My current setup is multiple 4k monitors in pixel-doubled resolution. It is relatively easy on the eyes and not too expensive ($300ish/monitor + VESA). I am working remotely and when I travel I have to work from my laptop and I would love to have a headset to replicate the multiple monitor experience on the go.

I have been hoping for this since the HTC Vive.

HTC Vive - simply too low resolution. Screen door effect visible. Also software such as Immersed was not available.

Replicating this 1000+ hour setup went as follows:

1. Buy a Quest 2. Meta has its issues however I have an account so no real issues on the Meta side other than Meta itself. Resolution is clearly superior to HTC Vive, with no obvious screen door effect. As the original poster mentions - the strap that comes with the Quest is terrible, and you will have to spend at least $100 to get the Quest to the point where it can be used continuously for long periods without the device itself being a distraction.

2. Immersed - Major issues with this software. Thankfully they give you a "pro" trial so you can try this without paying. Main issue was painlessly delivering what I wanted: screen closed multiple 4k-equivalent virtual monitors. On mac (preferred), there were issues with HDMI spoofing that I probably could have fixed with dongles had I desired. On windows the situation was better, but still finicky with resolution setting and seamless disconnect/reconnection. Would like to see more focus on integrating better resolution control as I imagine most users of the program want to use it as I do - without regard to attached monitors.

Turns out I should have done my homework before hand because a little math demonstrates why I was fooling myself that I could work with this setup:

via https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/99s1yr/what...

Measure the width of the monitor with which you usually work, call it W. Then measure the distance your eyes are typically away from it while you work, and call it D. Finally, determine the horizontal pixel count of your monitor when you work (like 1920 for a full HD monitor), and call it HPC. The resolution of your monitor in the center is then R = 1 / (2 * tan-1 ((W / HPC) / (2 * D))), in pixels/°. This resolution is the one you want. (For example, my resolution is 66 pixels/°, given I have a 28" diagonal 4k monitor that I view from 24" away.) The OG Vive's resolution is 11.4 pixels/° in the center. That's the resolution you have. To reach my monitor's resolution, the Vive's pixel count would have to be six times higher, or 6480x7200 per eye, everything else being the same.

Quest 2 resolution per eye is 1832 x 1920.

There is no way I could enjoy doing my job which consists of reading all day with such poor resolution, and I think we are a ways away from a solution.

Foveated rendering is a possible solution, however I don't see an easy answer.

Welcome! I highly recommend the study - even though the numbers are low, the data is very interesting.

I didn't mention K2 because I didn't study it. I make no claim to expertise, only familiarity.

Personally, I eat dark green leafy vegetables every day - one serving of kale contains 443% daily value of vitamin K and I probably consume 2-3 servings a day.

Most food we eat doesn't contain vitamin D. A serving of farmed salmon, for example, contains about 250 IU D3 - 32% of the daily value.

In any case, I highly agree with not trusting anonymous internet opinions.

It depends - ancient ancestors had a lot of different lifestyles. For example, Soranus of Ephesus reported deformations in the bones of children as early as the 100 CE.

However, this is I think what you are trying to get at:

One particular epidemiological study stands out as a guide for what typical 25-(OH)D levels might have been be for our earliest ancestors.

Luxwolda et al. studied populations of pastoral Masai and hunter-gatherer Hadzabe, sampling their blood for 25-(OH)D levels and taking note of their daily habits in reference to UV exposure.

The mean 25-(OH)D concentration in these populations was 115 nmol/L, with a range of 58 nmol/L to 171 nmol/L.

This study provides a general framework for the expected 25-(OH)D level of active, healthy humans working outdoors at a low (< 5 degrees) latitude. Humans have modified their living conditions greatly from this model of ancestral life, leading to reduced exposure to UV radiation.

My thesis argued that we should not be testing supplementation levels, instead we should be testing the effects of maintaining people at various serum levels of vitamin D year-round.

In acute hypervitaminosis D, there can be organ calcification that has to be treated. These cases are rarely reported - one case occurred when the patient ingested crystalline vitamin D - dosing themselves in the range of 1-2 million IU D3 per day for weeks, and although there was not an extensive follow-up to determine the long-term effect on the patient, the acute calcification was reversed with treatment.

Vitamin D is involved with calcium in the body in many different ways, specifically I was talking about a measure of the absorption of calcium into the body from food as promoted by vitamin D.

Organ calcification is extremely serious and a very understandable reason why doctors have been hesitant to recommend higher doses of vitamin D, however most medical thinking about vitamin D until recently has focused on the prevention of Rickets, which requires only a small amount of constant supplementation (500 IU D3) to avoid serious effects. In context, 10,000 IU seems like an enormous dose. However if you look at the blood serum levels of people who receive consistent UV exposure, they have much higher levels than someone who is being supplemented with 500 IU D3 and no UV. So much of this debate is around trying to find out what the "optimal" vitamin D level is rather than what level is "sufficient" to prevent Rickets.

There are many cases of kidney disorders causing issues in vitamin D metabolism - the majority of literature examples I read involved genetic kidney disorders which would not be be caused by increased calcium absorption.

I hope you are receiving the treatment you need.

I noted the levels needed to maximize intestinal calcium absorption because this is the best studied aspect of Vitamin D. Rickets was the main reason Vitamin D was discovered and supplemented.

Vitamin D level blood testing is imprecise - I would not consider any one test of Vitamin D levels to be accurate.

This person's cited paper corresponds with the calcium absorption data that suggests around 8,000 IU D3 is where calcium absorption begins to plateau and more vitamin D leads to minimal additional calcium absorption.

Since I haven't been going outside, I take vitamin D 10,000 IU daily. You are correct in that one shouldn't just take the advice of random internet strangers - I should be more careful in posting. My personal experience with Vitamin D has been extremely positive and so I get excited about sharing what I know - of course I had to work and couldn't actively respond to this thread as much as I would like.

I personally aim for 10,000 IU D3 daily from either sun or supplement. In normal times, living in New York, I would supplement 10,000 IU D3 from November through March, and then I would make sure to be outside 1 hour a day with at least arms and face exposed.

Shots of 250,000 IU are given clinically and the therapeutic dose was traditionally 50,000 IU D2 weekly - corresponding to a dose of about 3,500 IU D3 daily.

I highly recommend getting tested for kidney disease if you are worried and get multiple vitamin D tests - the tests are imprecise but will give you a general idea of what your levels are.

Yes, this was overly brief and a tilde is not enough to qualify this statement, and I should have said noon equatorial sun.

My point here was meant to be about how this is essentially the daily maximum dose from UV radiation due to the isomerization of previtamin D into inactive isomers, and to give context to a dose of 10,000 IU D3 seeming large when it is half the amount a person might receive from sun exposure.

7-dehydrocholesterol is photolyzed by UV to previtamin D. There is then spontaneous isomerization between this previtamin D, vitamin D and 2 inactive isomers. As vitamin D is used by the body, and the inactive isomers remain in the skin, there is an equilibrium - as vitamin D is used by the body it is drawn from the skin, leading to more conversion of inactive isomers to active vitamin D.

It is certainly a different mechanism. There are inactive isomers of pre-Vitamin D (tachysterol and lumisterol) that prevent over-production of Vitamin D from continued UV exposure.

I list these numbers to give a general idea of the levels of Vitamin D that people experience without oral supplementation.

My conclusion was that too many studies were being done to determine the correct or safe amount to supplement rather than testing regularly to determine a safe/optimal blood concentration.

Very excited for good prospective studies of Vitamin D.

Curious about your source for 3000 in 15 - I have read and reported more, and would like to read your source.

Did my masters on Vitamin D - It is very difficult to extract CLINICALLY RELEVANT information from retrospective epidemiological studies.

However, there a a few things that are clear:

1. Calcium absorption from the intestine increases with vitamin D supplementation dose up to around 8-10,000 IU D3 daily.

2. 15 minutes of full body exposure in noon sun is equivalent to a dose of ~20,000 IU D3

3. There are few cases of vitamin D overdose in the literature - doses in the 1,000,000 IU+ range within days is generally where symptoms are noted - this excludes people with kidney disorders.

Personally, I take 10k IU D3 a day. The D3 is important because D2 has 1/2 to 1/3 the effect per dose in raising calcium absorption levels.

I would recommend this level of supplementation to anyone who doesn’t have a kidney disorder.