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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Great answer, thanks. So measuring blood levels of vitamin D and setting a specific target no higher than 50 ng/ml should be enough to avoid this problem for most people? Or could taking a high daily dose for a short time to get to the desired blood level cause trouble as well?

Finally, do you see much difference in getting to that high blood level of vitamin D from sun exposure vs D in diet (fish, etc) vs supplements?

I recently started trying to get more vitamin D from the sun, a sperti vitamin d lamp, and food, in order to reduce the amount of pills needed for a given IU. I use the dminder app to track estimated blood levels between tests.

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Some people can tolerate Vitamin D levels above 50, so I wouldn't set that as an absolute cutoff - a Vitamin D in the 50s is good for many people, but I definitely don't want to see it above 70. Taking a higher dose for a short period of time is completely acceptable, as long as it doesn't become something that you stay on for years. It is really hard, if not impossible, to get toxic levels of Vitamin D solely from the sun or diet. I only see it with people taking supplements. And usually it's not a low dose of supplements. (And actually, many people don't even realize that they are getting high doses of Vitamin D. It is added to a lot of vitamins and supplements - so that supplement you take for hair growth may contain a few thousand units of Vitamin D, for example. I ask everyone to get out all of their supplements and look through for vitamin D.) In general, getting vitamins and minerals from diet is preferable to getting from supplements.

Sorry about the rate limiting! That's a new-account issue, and I hate that it affects perfectly legit new accounts. I've switched that off now, so she can post freely. If you'd like, we can transfer your comments beginning "From devaboone" to her username. (Edit: done now, by permission via email. The parent comment was originally posted by conorh.)

(All: when you see issues like this affecting HN threads and feel like doing a good deed, please alert us at hn@ycombinator.com. We see all the emails but often have no idea what's going on in the threads.)

Some of comments show up on the thread but not necessarily on her comment history.

I'm not seeing that. Can you link to an example?

Actually I think I was mistaken. They were more recent comments posted on an older comment by someone else, so they show up further down in her history.

What is a “not low dose” of vitamin D? Would 5000iU a day still be low? 10,000iu?

Is it really possible to have enough vitamin d exposure just from diet for someone who lives in a northern state which doesn’t get nearly as many sunny days as a place like florida or california?

5000 IU is high dose. 10,000 is really high. A more moderate dose would be 1000 to 2000 daily. If you live in a northern state, your Vitamin D level will vary with season. And with increased use of sunscreen (which is a good thing), it can be hard to get enough Vitamin D. I'm not opposed to anyone taking Vitamin D (I take it actually). I just want people to take it in moderation unless there is a very clear reason for taking high doses (and there are indications for that).

My wife and I take 60000 IU twice a month. Not as a daily dosage. Would this still constitute as high dosage? We don't get a lot of sunlight here, and we don't step out that often these days.

What is the current scientific consensus on how to take Vitamin D? Daily doses? Single very large doses spaced every fortnight?

I've tried searching the internet before about Vitamin D and it's surprisingly confusing, both about dosage as about intake routine. Also confusing that daily requirements are contested to be way off to our real needs, it's just a lot of misinformation lingering around that I, as a layman, can't really parse it.

The supplements with 10000 IU are very common these days... now you scared me..

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