4 ms·

Don't take your vitamin advice from an economist, is what the headline should read... This article is seriously dangerous in planting the false ideas that vita

Don't take your vitamin advice from an economist, is what the headline should read... This article is seriously dangerous in planting the false ideas that vitamin D and other supplementation are not worthwhile. The main reason to take Vitamin D has nothing to do with heart disease or cancer, that is why there are not significant beneficial results from the studies testing for that. It is a true straw man argument. Vitamin D is super important for your body and especially for bone development, the brain, and your immune system. It is less a vitamin and more of a hormone, as every single cell in your body has a receptor for it. It is very, very important to supplement it during the winter if you live anywhere above the line from Los Angeles, CA to Colombia, SC [1], as the sun never rises above 50% azimuth and so no UVB rays penetrate the atmosphere and no vitamin D synthesis can take place in the skin. These studies also use what appears from my brief checking, to be way too low of doses. I generally recommend at least 5,000 IU/day and a lot of those studies are between 400 to 600 IU/day. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_sun_exposure#Synthesis_of_vitamin_D3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_sun_exposure#...

Blackthorn 12y ago
Does food not come from the grocery store enriched with Vitamin D for this purpose?
- kazinator 12y ago
  Yes, some of it does; but the doses are ridiculously small.
- matznerd 12y ago
  Milk is fortified with Vitamin D, but only about 100 IU per serving, so you would need to have around 50 glasses a day to get it. Do you know anyone who drinks that much milk?
  - mitchty 12y ago
    I drink a gallon of milk about every 3 days. Even at that rate its a bit too much.
    - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
      I'd be careful if I were you. I drank about half as much as you and my hair starting falling out after a month. When I stopped drinking the milk, my hair started growing back.
      - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
        ??? Why would you downvote an HN member for giving a health warning about drinking massive amounts of milk? YES, I went to my doctor, yes we determined milk was the cause of the hair loss. Especially when I drank it at night before bedtime. Our closest guess was that some people have sensitivities to the hormones in milk. There are also cases of men growing breasts due to large quantities of soy milk which increase estrogen.
- lxmorj 12y ago
  Yes but the RDA is 600 IU. That's remarkably effective at preventing rickets, but not optimal. 5,000 IU seems to be closer to optimal, and well below the toxicity levels. You know, so I've read... Edit: Good Job Team!
russell 12y ago
I went all the way through to the summary, the main article is behind a paywall. The amount used in the studies was around 800IU. If you go outside in the summer in your swimming trunks or bikini for 15 minutes or so your body will generate 10,000 - 25,000IU. Your mileage will vary according to latitude and skin color. But the point is that the amount used in the studies was ridiculously small. I take 10,000IU per day and this article wont change my mind.
- matznerd 12y ago
  Thanks for clarifying that those studies are using 800 IU/day, which is still very low.
bane 12y ago
Side note about Vitamin D. Vitamin D increases calcium uptake into the bloodstream (where it finds its way into bones and such). This is why D is usually recommended as a secondary supplement to take with Calcium (or is usually bundled with Calcium). However, if you're like me, you shouldn't take D as you don't want to suffer from Hypercalcemia. It's really hard to diagnose until somebody bothers to do a blood test for elevated calcium and presents as basic aches and pains at first, and as it gets worse turns into all kinds of weird mood, fatigue and sleep disorders. Hypercalcemia can be deadly if left untreated and is not pleasant to have. Hypercalcemia can damage your central nervous system, lead to untreatable depression and cognitive dysfunction and eventually coma and cardiac arrest. Fortunately, I had a good doctor who caught it when I was complaining of constant fatigue, muscle weakness and nerve issues in my face and thought to check for it. At the time I was in grad school and working full-time so I just thought it was poor sleep habits. I was also taking 5,000 IU/day of Vitamin D thinking it would help my mood a bit. There's a bunch of other copresent medical issues with hypercalcemia, so if you catch one, you might catch the other, and fortunately treating one can help with all the others. These days, normal D enriched foods are fine for me as they don't come close to the high levels of D I was taking before, but I try to moderate D and Calcium rich foods a little.
- jmulho 12y ago
  Just curious, is your diet unusual in any way (e.g. vegetarian, vegan, etc.), or was it otherwise unusual when you were supplementing vitamin D? I've never heard of hypercalcemia, but I have heard of osteoporosis, which I assume is caused by hypocalcemia. I have heard a compelling argument that a high animal protein diet causes osteoporosis because protein makes blood ph more acidic and the body draws upon its bone calcium to bring the ph back to normal. If true, it is scary that so many people are into protein supplementation and high protein diets (Atkins, etc.). I'm wondering if low animal protein could cause the opposite effect, and if animal protein may help hypercalcemia.
  - bane 12y ago
    No. Pretty normal diet. It's often genetic and usually related to thyroid issues (which runs in my family, but so far I don't seem to have, at least nothing out of normal so far). My treatment was to avoid vitamin D and calcium as much as possible until my blood levels return to a normal range, then reintroduce them slowly. It's harder than you think, since it seems like everything from orange juice to muffins these days is extra fortified to combat osteoporosis and to help with child development (Vitamin D and Calcium fortification in food stuffs is usually to prevent rickets but has the nice side benefit of supposedly helping with Osteoporosis later in life). After a couple months the issues with the nerves in my face mostly went away and as that happened most of the fatigue disappeared. I'm unusually achy though, all over. I can eat normal these days most of the time, but if I start feeling like I want to lie down and go to sleep all the time, or the muscles around my eyes feel twitchy, I usually just make sure to cut out dairy and stay out of the sun for a week or two and it goes away. Before I go to the beach or for some kind of extended outdoor activity I'll cut my calcium intake as well. I usually come back from a day in the sun with skull shattering headaches though (which is supposed to be a sign of Magnesium Deficiency, but I test fine for that) so I don't enjoy many outdoor activities. For me, Vitamin D kinda sucks.

Blackthorn 12y ago

Does food not come from the grocery store enriched with Vitamin D for this purpose?

kazinator 12y ago
Yes, some of it does; but the doses are ridiculously small.
matznerd 12y ago
Milk is fortified with Vitamin D, but only about 100 IU per serving, so you would need to have around 50 glasses a day to get it. Do you know anyone who drinks that much milk?
- mitchty 12y ago
  I drink a gallon of milk about every 3 days. Even at that rate its a bit too much.
  - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
    I'd be careful if I were you. I drank about half as much as you and my hair starting falling out after a month. When I stopped drinking the milk, my hair started growing back.
    - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
      ??? Why would you downvote an HN member for giving a health warning about drinking massive amounts of milk? YES, I went to my doctor, yes we determined milk was the cause of the hair loss. Especially when I drank it at night before bedtime. Our closest guess was that some people have sensitivities to the hormones in milk. There are also cases of men growing breasts due to large quantities of soy milk which increase estrogen.
lxmorj 12y ago
Yes but the RDA is 600 IU. That's remarkably effective at preventing rickets, but not optimal. 5,000 IU seems to be closer to optimal, and well below the toxicity levels. You know, so I've read... Edit: Good Job Team!

russell 12y ago

I went all the way through to the summary, the main article is behind a paywall. The amount used in the studies was around 800IU. If you go outside in the summer in your swimming trunks or bikini for 15 minutes or so your body will generate 10,000 - 25,000IU. Your mileage will vary according to latitude and skin color. But the point is that the amount used in the studies was ridiculously small. I take 10,000IU per day and this article wont change my mind.

matznerd 12y ago
Thanks for clarifying that those studies are using 800 IU/day, which is still very low.

bane 12y ago

Side note about Vitamin D. Vitamin D increases calcium uptake into the bloodstream (where it finds its way into bones and such). This is why D is usually recommended as a secondary supplement to take with Calcium (or is usually bundled with Calcium). However, if you're like me, you shouldn't take D as you don't want to suffer from Hypercalcemia. It's really hard to diagnose until somebody bothers to do a blood test for elevated calcium and presents as basic aches and pains at first, and as it gets worse turns into all kinds of weird mood, fatigue and sleep disorders. Hypercalcemia can be deadly if left untreated and is not pleasant to have. Hypercalcemia can damage your central nervous system, lead to untreatable depression and cognitive dysfunction and eventually coma and cardiac arrest. Fortunately, I had a good doctor who caught it when I was complaining of constant fatigue, muscle weakness and nerve issues in my face and thought to check for it. At the time I was in grad school and working full-time so I just thought it was poor sleep habits. I was also taking 5,000 IU/day of Vitamin D thinking it would help my mood a bit. There's a bunch of other copresent medical issues with hypercalcemia, so if you catch one, you might catch the other, and fortunately treating one can help with all the others. These days, normal D enriched foods are fine for me as they don't come close to the high levels of D I was taking before, but I try to moderate D and Calcium rich foods a little.

jmulho 12y ago
Just curious, is your diet unusual in any way (e.g. vegetarian, vegan, etc.), or was it otherwise unusual when you were supplementing vitamin D? I've never heard of hypercalcemia, but I have heard of osteoporosis, which I assume is caused by hypocalcemia. I have heard a compelling argument that a high animal protein diet causes osteoporosis because protein makes blood ph more acidic and the body draws upon its bone calcium to bring the ph back to normal. If true, it is scary that so many people are into protein supplementation and high protein diets (Atkins, etc.). I'm wondering if low animal protein could cause the opposite effect, and if animal protein may help hypercalcemia.
- bane 12y ago
  No. Pretty normal diet. It's often genetic and usually related to thyroid issues (which runs in my family, but so far I don't seem to have, at least nothing out of normal so far). My treatment was to avoid vitamin D and calcium as much as possible until my blood levels return to a normal range, then reintroduce them slowly. It's harder than you think, since it seems like everything from orange juice to muffins these days is extra fortified to combat osteoporosis and to help with child development (Vitamin D and Calcium fortification in food stuffs is usually to prevent rickets but has the nice side benefit of supposedly helping with Osteoporosis later in life). After a couple months the issues with the nerves in my face mostly went away and as that happened most of the fatigue disappeared. I'm unusually achy though, all over. I can eat normal these days most of the time, but if I start feeling like I want to lie down and go to sleep all the time, or the muscles around my eyes feel twitchy, I usually just make sure to cut out dairy and stay out of the sun for a week or two and it goes away. Before I go to the beach or for some kind of extended outdoor activity I'll cut my calcium intake as well. I usually come back from a day in the sun with skull shattering headaches though (which is supposed to be a sign of Magnesium Deficiency, but I test fine for that) so I don't enjoy many outdoor activities. For me, Vitamin D kinda sucks.