4 ms·
On a slight tangent, if people are unaware, you can pay for and get just about any lab test without a prescription in the United States.
by dyauspitr 4mo ago
On a slight tangent, if people are unaware, you can pay for and get just about any lab test without a prescription in the United States.
- nomel 4mo agoThis is how I found my 10k IU of vitamin D a day, based on modern recommendations for indoor workers, that I modulate based on how much I'm outdoors, was perfectly on the mark!
- lemonberry 4mo agoThis is the amount I shoot for in the winter - I live in New England - it's made a huge difference in my life. I'm totally open to it being placebo though and I don't care. I don't supplement with it during the summer.
- Aurornis 4mo agoAlso an indoor worker. 10K IU daily would have put me far into hypervitaminosis D range. Make sure you test after a very long time, such as a year of steady supplementation. A lot of the excess Vitamin D cases were taking less than 10K IU daily.
- nomel 4mo ago> such as a year of steady supplementation. This is the entire issue. You get vitamin D from the sun. The concept of "steady supplementation" of vitamin D is not logical, unless your sun exposure is also steady, which is where the not-so-useful guidelines come from: some mean of some distribution of some skin tone of sun exposure, leaning on the "less" side of things, with current recommended values based on means from over 50 years ago. I would never take 10k steady, because I don't live in a cave!
- jvican 4mo agoYes, and to be concrete, you can do so at economical prices at https://requestatest.com https://requestatest.com (it's a lifesaver in many occasions, I've used it 4 times with great success).
- nostromo 4mo agoAnd you can use a HSA or FSA to pay for it.
- NavinF 4mo agoOther Quest resellers like https://goodlabs.com/ https://goodlabs.com/ are way cheaper. Eg "Testosterone, Free (Direct) With Total Testosterone, LC/MS-MS" is $159 on that website vs $15 on goodlabs.
- jvican 4mo agoNice! I didn't know about this company. Thanks for sharing. Has anyone tried and can they vouch for them?
- NavinF 4mo agoYes I've used goodlabs. I paid them and they sent a prepaid lab order to Quest just like any other reseller. Also donated blood via goodlabs to get some basic labs for free, but that requires driving to SF. No donation sites in south bay
- Tangurena2 4mo agoMy PCP uses Quest Diagnostics and a vitamin d test is, I think, about $50. No fasting needed for it, nor prescription.
- cj 4mo agoDirect link to buy: https://www.questhealth.com/product/vitamin-d-test/17306M.html?suggest=true https://www.questhealth.com/product/vitamin-d-test/17306M.ht... Definitely not the cheapest place to order the test from, but it will get the job done.
- petesergeant 4mo agoYou can get most tests (although often not genetic) in many countries, with Canada being an outlier in forcing you to get a doctor’s note for just about everything.
- StayTrue 4mo agoReally terrible in Canada. If you don’t have a family physician (like everyone I know), good luck making it through triage at the walk-in clinic because you want a test to see your baseline values or proactively check for deficiency. The “hack” is you can pay a naturopath to order tests but the tests are not covered by public insurance in this case (actually pretty expensive IIRC).
- petesergeant 4mo agoI’ve had good experiences with getmaple for random and quick doctors appts