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Posted by surprisetalk 4 days ago

The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated(dynomight.net)
383 points | 292 commentspage 5
Johnyjohnson123 3 days ago|
People who say vitamin d isnt important should read about auld rickie...
criddell 3 days ago||
This is great. I wonder if there's something like a patreon model where we could sponsor similar deep dives on other supplements?

For example, I've been supplementing with nicotinamide riboside for a few years now. I stop occasionally and when I do stiff and sore hands and knees return and I get more headaches.

I'd love to know if I'm deluding myself (placebo effect?) or there's good science that backs up my experience.

js2 3 days ago|
examine.com
criddell 3 days ago||
Thanks!

The results from examine.com for nicotinamide are interesting, but not as focused or concise (or usable) as the vitamin D information in this posting.

atahanacar 3 days ago||
Medical doctor here. Please don't get health advice from hn comments. As a matter of fact, I advice against reading anything about health on hn, as the risks of dangerous misinformation far outweigh any useful information you might learn here.
Bender 3 days ago||
Principal Armchair Commander here. I second this. That said I also avoid health advice from professionals. I have too often found their incentives to be in conflict with my well being. I just do my own research and ignore everyone, especially AI.
atahanacar 3 days ago||
I assume you are American? I find it sad that a doctor has any incentive other than providing their patients with the best care possible.
Bender 3 days ago||
I assume you are American?

Was it that obvious? It would be cool if I could have a theme song. [1] and yeah I don't know how to fix the US health care system.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVkTmnJkAN8&list=PLxUfU-CW9j...

acheron 3 days ago|||
It’s always great when years of medical and scientific studies are instantly debunked by HN’s top JavaScript developers. One wonders why we even bother having research universities.
annzabelle 3 days ago|||
There was a thread that touched on lyme disease recently, and there were a ridiculous number of comments going down pseudoscientific rabbit holes about people who'd somehow gotten chronic lyme in places with no endemic lyme disease and that the only ways to fix this were chronic antibiotics and hyperthermia chambers.

HN often suffers from the trait of people who are really bright in one area assuming that that means they are really knowledgeable in areas they don't know much about.

atahanacar 3 days ago||
That is relatively benign compared to what I've seen before. I normally refrain from repeating misinformation, even for debunking it but I will make an exception (or two). I've seen comments ranging from "salt intake doesn't increase blood pressure because you pee what you don't need" to "blood glucose levels aren't good for diagnosing diabetes".

Edit: OK, that's not really a "range". I have no idea why I phrased it like that. Both are very dangerous statements that can be life threatening if the wrong person believes it. I just hope that comment didn't cause any diabetic ketoacidosis cases.

cup 3 days ago|||
Do you think people seeking medical advice from HN comments might be related to their disatisfaction from the suppor they receive from medical clinicians?
atahanacar 3 days ago||
Yes and no. Some are just way overconfident in their knowledge of medicine and human body, while it is miniscule compared to the average physician's. Medicine is a field much larger than people realize. It is easy to think you know a lot when you don't even know how much you are missing.

Having a reason doesn't make it any less dangerous though.

pixel_popping 3 days ago|||
I can't fully agree with avoiding the topic altogether. Yes, people need to be careful, but building real knowledge in complex subjects like health generally requires engaging continuously (same as in Computer science) with research and studies (and learning to evaluate them critically) AND gathering people' opinions and perspectives (very important, after all, the experience of an MD grows over time because of reports of side-effects from your own patient, which is close), rather than shutting out discussion entirely, even for yourself who is already an MD. Also not everyone had the opportunity or desire to study medicine formally but still want a chance to be able to understand it in greater depth, and one great way to learn is to read a ton.

We can also relate that some drugs (albeit most are illegal but whatever, it doesn't invalidate them) from recreational to bodybuilding drugs are practically only massively "studied" by the bro-science community and many topic about harm reduction and so-on stems from there, enormous amount of people have started getting interested into health, supplements... due to reading about it randomly from people.

Although, in practice, you are partially right, it also does damage because many people will just take it as face value and just don't have enough expertise yet to do a proper reasoning around some takes and might not check if it's factual.

kev009 3 days ago||
Halp us docter
rhipitr 3 days ago||
Have a loved one that has extremely low vitamin D issues. Takes ergocalciferol from time to time and it is pretty useful in my opinion.
egberts1 3 days ago||
methylcobalamin B-12 plus Vitamin D3 is the preferred form.

Skip the D2 vitamin.

economistbob 3 days ago||
Thousands of words and no references list. Lame. Makes me suspect a piece written a bot. I have to dismiss almost all of it since there is no way to fact check and the article is filled with those asides that the bots put in there. The asides I refer to are the "are you still with me" and other psuedo-in-your-face punchy nonsense. Half the articles on the internet think I want backfill and history and punchy check-ins rather than the direct information that I used to scan through and obtain in about twenty seconds, but somehow those brand new AI slop sites are the top results on all engines (corruption since they sell services to generate those pages).

Lame. It started like enjoying an encyclopedia and ended like getting my face punched by a narcissistic robot who might have lied about facts and gave no way to spot check except redoing the entire article again myself from scratch. A novella on biophysics and no works cited?

Reading 7k words on biophysics with supposed data and science facts and getting hit with dozens of self reference footnotes instead of external citations is offensive to my intelligence.

I do not have the karma for the downvote button so I shall simply leave this.

Vitamin D is rat poison. The stuff they use in randomly controlled trials is not the stuff your body makes on its own. Too much sun and skin produced vitamin will not kill you. Too much rat poison will.

Real human research per the Material Safety Data Sheets with zero slop:

https://chemtrails.substack.com/p/vitamin-d-is-rat-poison-th...

fearnot 3 days ago||
Again, dynomight proves he's better than us.
OutOfHere 3 days ago||
Just mildy exaggerated? Is this a joke article? If you don't achieve a suitable level, health will suffer immensely, even permanently. There are no ifs and buts. People who say otherwise work for the medical industrial complex and will get you killed.

Note that adequate magnesium is critical for proper vitamin D function, but the article doesn't document it.

gblargg 3 days ago||
Same for breathing oxygen, if you don't get it you'll die, but for most people oxygen supplementation would not be worth even knowing about.
OutOfHere 3 days ago||
That's an absurd analogy. Vitamin D is a vitamin that is in large part derived from significant sunlight exposure. Vitamins are essential by definition. Sunlight exposure is highly insufficient by historical standards. This is why supplementation is absolutely necessary in almost everyone who is not a full time outdoor worker.

In contrast, the air contains oxygen which is sufficient for most people with normal lung function.

gblargg 3 days ago||
If most people have a significant Vitamin D deficiency, then I agree that my comparison was absurd.
d2kx 3 days ago|||
Probably heavily depends on the country/region, but here in Germany it is basically the norm to be Vitamin D deficient. Like, half of the population have a deficiency when there is some sun and basically everyone has a deficiency for months during fall/winter/spring. So I have to laugh when I read "taking vitamin D does nothing unless you’re severely deficient". Yeah like, but that's most people in many countries lmao
OutOfHere 3 days ago|||
Without supplementation, yes, most people do have a substantial deficiency. There also exists the sufficiency range which is higher, and the optimality range which is slightly higher still.
tonetheman 3 days ago||
[dead]
accidentallfact 3 days ago||
What if rickets is actually a variant of polio, and vitamin D is just a hormone, and not a vitamin?

Rickets still occurs in Africa with abundant sunlight, but with polio still present. (The strains that come from vaccines are usually not counted.)

h4kunamata 3 days ago|
Misinformation.

As somebody who spends an insane amount of time inside, the lack for exposure to the Sun mot just affected vitamin D levels but eyes sight too, they were terrible, and also mood.

Taking vitamin D pill instead of Sun is not the same.

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