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Vitamin D is the only one the NHS (i.e. the UK authority) recommends adults 'consider' taking, especially in winter months. It suggests year round could be bene

by OJFord 2y ago

Vitamin D is the only one the NHS (i.e. the UK authority) recommends adults 'consider' taking, especially in winter months. It suggests year round could be beneficial for certain groups, such as darker skin (less production of it from the limited sun we get than lighter skin) and those working/spending most time indoors. For everything else its guidance (for non-pregnant adults) is that you should be able to get it from your diet. Not that it says don't or that it's really bad, or especially if you have some inherent deficiency (or you're a menstruating vegetarian, etc.) it could be a very good idea to take the relevant supplement to make it easier than getting it from food, I just thought it was interesting when I was looking through recently that the language is very consistent for all of them, except vit D which has the relatively strong 'should consider taking it'.

voisin 2y ago
> Vitamin D is the only one the NHS (i.e. the UK authority) recommends adults 'consider' taking, especially in winter months I have had two doctors in Canada tell me that the government health plan does not cover Vitamin D testing because everyone at our latitude is expected to be vitamin D deficient and should be on a supplement.
- resoluteteeth 2y ago
  If they really believe that everyone is deficient they should probably cover testing. There is a lot of argument about the appropriate dosage for vitamin d supplementation, so repeated testing might actually be the only way to make sure you're taking the right amount.
  - OJFord 2y ago
    Well per the NHS you should consider taking 10ug (400IU) daily, but up to 100ug (4,000IU) as a supplement would be safe. (Risk of hypercalcæmia if too high.) (As a supplement too, so that's presumably saying ok maybe the person's not deficient, they're naturally at 20ug or whatever, they take a 100ug supplement, add some margin, and it's still safe.) So basically what the doctors/gov health plan say in Canada according to GP makes sense to me wrt that in the sense that you almost certainly are deficient, 10ug is enough, an order of magnitude more than that is still safe; so just take it. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-... (I don't know about the cost to the Canadian government if they wanted to provide it obviously, but to me as an individual it's cheaper to get 365x 10ug supplements than it is to get 1x test to see if I'm deficient.)

by OJFord 2y ago

voisin 2y ago

> Vitamin D is the only one the NHS (i.e. the UK authority) recommends adults 'consider' taking, especially in winter months I have had two doctors in Canada tell me that the government health plan does not cover Vitamin D testing because everyone at our latitude is expected to be vitamin D deficient and should be on a supplement.

resoluteteeth 2y ago
If they really believe that everyone is deficient they should probably cover testing. There is a lot of argument about the appropriate dosage for vitamin d supplementation, so repeated testing might actually be the only way to make sure you're taking the right amount.
- OJFord 2y ago
  Well per the NHS you should consider taking 10ug (400IU) daily, but up to 100ug (4,000IU) as a supplement would be safe. (Risk of hypercalcæmia if too high.) (As a supplement too, so that's presumably saying ok maybe the person's not deficient, they're naturally at 20ug or whatever, they take a 100ug supplement, add some margin, and it's still safe.) So basically what the doctors/gov health plan say in Canada according to GP makes sense to me wrt that in the sense that you almost certainly are deficient, 10ug is enough, an order of magnitude more than that is still safe; so just take it. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-... (I don't know about the cost to the Canadian government if they wanted to provide it obviously, but to me as an individual it's cheaper to get 365x 10ug supplements than it is to get 1x test to see if I'm deficient.)