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Comment by ramoz | Hacker News Reader

> However, when the studies were divided according to whether vitamin D3 was taken daily in a low dose* or in higher doses administered at longer intervals*, a large difference was seen. In the four studies with the infrequent hogher doses, there was no effect on cancer mortality. In contrast, in the summary of the ten studies with daily dosing, the researchers determined a statistically significant twelve percent reduction in cancer mortality.

What exactly is the recommendation here, low or higher doses? or something else because Im struggling to understand this

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Did they test "high dose taken frequently" at all? Bearing in mind that the guideline vitamin-D daily dose target is set at just about the lowest possible value that doesn't cause obvious deficiencies.

Vitamin D is fat soluble, and thus you can overdose on it. High dose frequently is not recommended, and most high dose supplements will have warning labels about vitaminosis.

You need to take extreme amounts of it for months to overdose.

Something like 40,000-100,000IU/day for several months.

That's 8-20 pills per day of the most potent D3 commonly available.

I've also been told to be careful with any vitamin supplements while on chemo, and to consult a cancer dietician before conducting you're own science... the reason, as I understand it as a patient, is that high oxidation can actually keep cancer cells strong and healthy enough to create chemoresistance.

From the footnotes:

> In the studies, daily low doses were 400 to 4000 IU per day, and higher-doses administered at longer intervals were 60,000 to 120,000 IU once per month or less.

If you read further they found that lower daily doses were better.

> In contrast, in the summary of the ten studies with daily dosing, the researchers determined a statistically significant twelve percent reduction in cancer mortality

> In the studies, daily low doses were 400 to 4000 IU per day, and higher-doses administered at longer intervals were 60,000 to 120,000 IU once per month or less.

I'm in the UK and the max dosage I can get for Vitamin D in my local supermarket pharmacy is 1000 IU

ah, daily==lower

There is no recommendation made here. These are observations and far from clinical guidelines, or anything any doctor would recommend you do.

Frequent low doses. The other time/quantity combinations were either not studied or had no effect.

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