7 ms·

Vitamin D, red light therapy, insulin attenuating response of a walk, immunological benefit of allergen exposure, cognitive noise reduction and rest response of

Vitamin D, red light therapy, insulin attenuating response of a walk, immunological benefit of allergen exposure, cognitive noise reduction and rest response of walks in forests. Man keeps trying to bring the outdoors inside.

nickff 11mo ago
While I find your comment enjoyably pithy, in the case of vitamin D, many humans are currently living at latitudes which they are not suited to (skin being too dark to generate enough vitamin D given the insolation), and eating diets which do not provide them with sufficient amounts of it (the carnivore diets of Inuits and similar groups being a good contrast).
- djtango 11mo ago
  Amusing how thanks to the war on cholesterol the UK unravelled a lot of egg eating habits - a natural source of vitamin D. The UK also consumed a lot more liver than it does today I imagine...
  - lawlessone 11mo ago
    Are they that unpopular? Seem like a staple of an English Breakfast.
    - djtango 11mo ago
      Couldn't quickly find any sources for the UK specifically but this should suffice https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/
  - Theodores 11mo ago
    Vitamin D supplementation in the UK - now there is a fascinating topic. With the industrial revolution there was a problem of kids in cities getting rickets. This was due to a lack of vitamin C and that was due to a lack of daylight due to the smog. The solution was to take the kids out of the city so they could spend time in the countryside. However, along with the industrial revolution came steam trains, and, with steam trains, it became a lot easier to get fresh food from the farm to the city table. Milk became an early commodity for this railway trade, in the days before refrigeration. Bottling had to be invented too, along with pasteurisation to get the modern milk product. They fortified it with vitamin D and, in time, made it mandatory in schools for kids to have dinky bottles of milk for their morning break. All kids hated the stuff but it was 'good for them' and good for keeping farmers gainfully employed. Then the clean air acts came along, with the first street to ban fires in fireplaces being opposite the smoke free coal factory, the factory being anything but smoke free. Deindustrialisation happened too, so there were no cities with smokestack industries at their heart. With clean air there was no longer any need to fortify the milk with vitamin D, so that stopped. From now on, kids would get their vitamin D doing things such as playing in the school playground. But then we became seriously car dependent and the age of the free-range child was over. With 'stranger danger' and screens (initially just TV) taking over, we entered a new era of people not getting enough daylight again. Along the way vitamin D has been downgraded, much like Pluto, from being a 'vitamin' to being a hormone. A lot of people want to point this out and explain the science to you. From hearing how some talk about vitamin D, it sounds like the recommended supplements are all over the place. Clearly there are millions, if not billions that seem to be living just fine with not much sunlight in their lives and on no vitamin D supplements. Where's the rickets? Good question, but then, in Antarctica, where there are months of darkness to endure, they are on something like 20,000 units a day, and they probably know what they are doing. Maybe following their example for this winter could be my next 'nutrition experiment'. Sometimes, when there is so much conflicting information, it is best to do an n=1 experiment with one's own body.
    - thewebguyd 11mo ago
      > Maybe following their example for this winter could be my next 'nutrition experiment' Anecdotal and a sample size of 1, but I tried supplementing Vitamin D last year in the winter months. I live in the PNW, which between October and March, the sun is too low to trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin to see if it had any effect on my energy levels and mood, I suffer from seasonal affective disorder pretty severely. Taking 5,000 IU daily had no noticeable effect for me. A slight increase in energy levels but not significant enough that I'd be confident in attributing it to supplementation. I was hesitant to supplement more without medical advice and a blood test. That's not to say Vitamin D isn't important (it is), and the scientists in Antartica definitely know what they're doing, but it's more to say YMMV. For me, just making an effort to do more physical activity outdoors during the dark months had more of an impact
      - seba_dos1 11mo ago
        ~5000 IU daily between February and May was barely enough to raise 25(OH) D level in my blood from 9 to 30 ng/ml. Depending on who you ask, 30 is either the bound between "deficient" and "insufficient", or between "insufficient" and "sufficient". Regardless of who you ask, there's plenty of headroom until "excess".
        rcxdude 11mo ago
        Yes, it's possible but relatively hard to overdose on vitamin D, and due to a cock-up in some calculations in a study, until recently the recommended supplement amounts were about an order of magnitude too low: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5541280/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5541280/
    - LtdJorge 11mo ago
      > This was due to a lack of vitamin C and that was due to a lack of daylight I think you also meant Vitamin D there
    - rcxdude 11mo ago
      The NHS does recommend that everyone in the UK 'consider' vitamin D supplementation during the autumn and winter: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-... , because the amount of sunlight available in those months is not enough to maintain a healthy level.
- hinkley 11mo ago
  It’s criminal that the US sent Somalian refuges to live in Minnesota. Those are some seriously brown people in the land of no vitamin D. Pretty big population in Seattle as well, which is worse due to cloud cover.
  - lisbbb 11mo ago
    It was never about doing right for people, it was about making unbelievable gobs of money using them as pawns.
    - hinkley 11mo ago
      I mean I guess they could have dumped them in West Virginia or Kentucky and that would have been much much worse.
  - thewebguyd 11mo ago
    > which is worse due to cloud cover. Not just cloud cover. Most areas in the PNW, the sun is so low in the sky between October and March that you can't synthesize vitamin D through the skin at all during those months, even on a bright sunny day. Even during the summer up here, you really only get a window of roughly 10am to 3pm where enough UV-B rays can penetrate the atmosphere, in July. It's estimated that >80% of the PNW population are deficient (compared with 40% nationwide in the US).
    - hinkley 11mo ago
      That same podcast I mentioned pointed out that if a white person nude sunbathed in the winter in full sun, you’d get 2nd degree burns long before you made enough vitamin d. The body stores it though. So how much of a deficit you’re running for how long matters.
  - sedivy94 11mo ago
    Minnesota, not Wisconsin. Same latitude and a fair point.
    - 11mo ago
loverofhumanz 11mo ago
Man suffered outdoors very much, for a million years. Man want both good of indoors and good of out outdoors.
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  Man agree
  - supportengineer 11mo ago
    Few words good
    - IAmBroom 11mo ago
      fewer gooder
- SketchySeaBeast 11mo ago
  Indoors best invention since fire.
  - hinkley 11mo ago
    Chimney next best invention.
    - SketchySeaBeast 11mo ago
      Man love synergy.
      - hinkley 11mo ago
        You not from tribe.
    - formerly_proven 11mo ago
      Fire indoors but smoke outdoors.
al_borland 11mo ago
While I’d love to just go for a walk outside, the allergen exposure of the outdoors is too high most of the time. This elements any mental health benefits a walk in a forest might otherwise give.
- yadaeno 11mo ago
  Allergy shots work very well.
  - al_borland 11mo ago
    I’m currently getting allergy shots. This is my 3rd attempt. Throughout my life I’ve gotten shots for about 12 years now. The last guy said they were better than I was kid and basically a cure now. 6 years later, and on the strongest dosage they’d give, getting 3 shots with each appointment… and I was never able to spend time outside without worry of what would follow. There has been minor improvement in controlled testing, but no noticeable benefit when actually trying to live life. I go outside near nature once each year as a test to see if there was any progress. I can’t tolerate much more than that. Shots work well for some. They worked decently well when I was a kid, but these days, not so much. I still hope the current ones will work, as I don’t have other options, but I’m beginning to lose hope.
  - IAmBroom 11mo ago
    Privileged comment. Walks in a controlled greenhouse without allergenic pollinators also work, but the poor can't easily access either in the US.
    - philipallstar 11mo ago
      Anti-allergy pills are some of the cheapest[0] and safest products on the market. [0] https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-allergy-relief-diphenhydramine-coated-mini-tabs/ID=prod2502000-product https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-allergy-relief-d... $4.99 for 24x 1-a-days
    - pavel_lishin 11mo ago
keybored 11mo ago
How do I bring outdoors to the wage slave office? And how do I bring light to the pre-work and afterwork when there is no sun at those times? The practical man uses technology to offset the prison built for him. The hapless enabler farms “pithy” HN points in his LED-lit room.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

nickff 11mo ago

While I find your comment enjoyably pithy, in the case of vitamin D, many humans are currently living at latitudes which they are not suited to (skin being too dark to generate enough vitamin D given the insolation), and eating diets which do not provide them with sufficient amounts of it (the carnivore diets of Inuits and similar groups being a good contrast).

djtango 11mo ago
Amusing how thanks to the war on cholesterol the UK unravelled a lot of egg eating habits - a natural source of vitamin D. The UK also consumed a lot more liver than it does today I imagine...
- lawlessone 11mo ago
  Are they that unpopular? Seem like a staple of an English Breakfast.
  - djtango 11mo ago
    Couldn't quickly find any sources for the UK specifically but this should suffice https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/
- Theodores 11mo ago
  Vitamin D supplementation in the UK - now there is a fascinating topic. With the industrial revolution there was a problem of kids in cities getting rickets. This was due to a lack of vitamin C and that was due to a lack of daylight due to the smog. The solution was to take the kids out of the city so they could spend time in the countryside. However, along with the industrial revolution came steam trains, and, with steam trains, it became a lot easier to get fresh food from the farm to the city table. Milk became an early commodity for this railway trade, in the days before refrigeration. Bottling had to be invented too, along with pasteurisation to get the modern milk product. They fortified it with vitamin D and, in time, made it mandatory in schools for kids to have dinky bottles of milk for their morning break. All kids hated the stuff but it was 'good for them' and good for keeping farmers gainfully employed. Then the clean air acts came along, with the first street to ban fires in fireplaces being opposite the smoke free coal factory, the factory being anything but smoke free. Deindustrialisation happened too, so there were no cities with smokestack industries at their heart. With clean air there was no longer any need to fortify the milk with vitamin D, so that stopped. From now on, kids would get their vitamin D doing things such as playing in the school playground. But then we became seriously car dependent and the age of the free-range child was over. With 'stranger danger' and screens (initially just TV) taking over, we entered a new era of people not getting enough daylight again. Along the way vitamin D has been downgraded, much like Pluto, from being a 'vitamin' to being a hormone. A lot of people want to point this out and explain the science to you. From hearing how some talk about vitamin D, it sounds like the recommended supplements are all over the place. Clearly there are millions, if not billions that seem to be living just fine with not much sunlight in their lives and on no vitamin D supplements. Where's the rickets? Good question, but then, in Antarctica, where there are months of darkness to endure, they are on something like 20,000 units a day, and they probably know what they are doing. Maybe following their example for this winter could be my next 'nutrition experiment'. Sometimes, when there is so much conflicting information, it is best to do an n=1 experiment with one's own body.
  - thewebguyd 11mo ago
    > Maybe following their example for this winter could be my next 'nutrition experiment' Anecdotal and a sample size of 1, but I tried supplementing Vitamin D last year in the winter months. I live in the PNW, which between October and March, the sun is too low to trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin to see if it had any effect on my energy levels and mood, I suffer from seasonal affective disorder pretty severely. Taking 5,000 IU daily had no noticeable effect for me. A slight increase in energy levels but not significant enough that I'd be confident in attributing it to supplementation. I was hesitant to supplement more without medical advice and a blood test. That's not to say Vitamin D isn't important (it is), and the scientists in Antartica definitely know what they're doing, but it's more to say YMMV. For me, just making an effort to do more physical activity outdoors during the dark months had more of an impact
    - seba_dos1 11mo ago
      ~5000 IU daily between February and May was barely enough to raise 25(OH) D level in my blood from 9 to 30 ng/ml. Depending on who you ask, 30 is either the bound between "deficient" and "insufficient", or between "insufficient" and "sufficient". Regardless of who you ask, there's plenty of headroom until "excess".
      - rcxdude 11mo ago
        Yes, it's possible but relatively hard to overdose on vitamin D, and due to a cock-up in some calculations in a study, until recently the recommended supplement amounts were about an order of magnitude too low: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5541280/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5541280/
  - LtdJorge 11mo ago
    > This was due to a lack of vitamin C and that was due to a lack of daylight I think you also meant Vitamin D there
  - rcxdude 11mo ago
    The NHS does recommend that everyone in the UK 'consider' vitamin D supplementation during the autumn and winter: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-... , because the amount of sunlight available in those months is not enough to maintain a healthy level.
hinkley 11mo ago
It’s criminal that the US sent Somalian refuges to live in Minnesota. Those are some seriously brown people in the land of no vitamin D. Pretty big population in Seattle as well, which is worse due to cloud cover.
- lisbbb 11mo ago
  It was never about doing right for people, it was about making unbelievable gobs of money using them as pawns.
  - hinkley 11mo ago
    I mean I guess they could have dumped them in West Virginia or Kentucky and that would have been much much worse.
- thewebguyd 11mo ago
  > which is worse due to cloud cover. Not just cloud cover. Most areas in the PNW, the sun is so low in the sky between October and March that you can't synthesize vitamin D through the skin at all during those months, even on a bright sunny day. Even during the summer up here, you really only get a window of roughly 10am to 3pm where enough UV-B rays can penetrate the atmosphere, in July. It's estimated that >80% of the PNW population are deficient (compared with 40% nationwide in the US).
  - hinkley 11mo ago
    That same podcast I mentioned pointed out that if a white person nude sunbathed in the winter in full sun, you’d get 2nd degree burns long before you made enough vitamin d. The body stores it though. So how much of a deficit you’re running for how long matters.
- sedivy94 11mo ago
  Minnesota, not Wisconsin. Same latitude and a fair point.
  - 11mo ago

loverofhumanz 11mo ago

Man suffered outdoors very much, for a million years. Man want both good of indoors and good of out outdoors.

barbazoo 11mo ago
Man agree
- supportengineer 11mo ago
  Few words good
  - IAmBroom 11mo ago
    fewer gooder
SketchySeaBeast 11mo ago
Indoors best invention since fire.
- hinkley 11mo ago
  Chimney next best invention.
  - SketchySeaBeast 11mo ago
    Man love synergy.
    - hinkley 11mo ago
      You not from tribe.
  - formerly_proven 11mo ago
    Fire indoors but smoke outdoors.

al_borland 11mo ago

While I’d love to just go for a walk outside, the allergen exposure of the outdoors is too high most of the time. This elements any mental health benefits a walk in a forest might otherwise give.

yadaeno 11mo ago
Allergy shots work very well.
- al_borland 11mo ago
  I’m currently getting allergy shots. This is my 3rd attempt. Throughout my life I’ve gotten shots for about 12 years now. The last guy said they were better than I was kid and basically a cure now. 6 years later, and on the strongest dosage they’d give, getting 3 shots with each appointment… and I was never able to spend time outside without worry of what would follow. There has been minor improvement in controlled testing, but no noticeable benefit when actually trying to live life. I go outside near nature once each year as a test to see if there was any progress. I can’t tolerate much more than that. Shots work well for some. They worked decently well when I was a kid, but these days, not so much. I still hope the current ones will work, as I don’t have other options, but I’m beginning to lose hope.
- IAmBroom 11mo ago
  Privileged comment. Walks in a controlled greenhouse without allergenic pollinators also work, but the poor can't easily access either in the US.
  - philipallstar 11mo ago
    Anti-allergy pills are some of the cheapest[0] and safest products on the market. [0] https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-allergy-relief-diphenhydramine-coated-mini-tabs/ID=prod2502000-product https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-allergy-relief-d... $4.99 for 24x 1-a-days
  - pavel_lishin 11mo ago

keybored 11mo ago

How do I bring outdoors to the wage slave office? And how do I bring light to the pre-work and afterwork when there is no sun at those times? The practical man uses technology to offset the prison built for him. The hapless enabler farms “pithy” HN points in his LED-lit room.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]