The problem with vitamin D was that up until about a year ago, official recommendations in many countries were mistakenly low (500-1000 IUs), which as it turned out, was not enough for many people. It was even hard to find proper pills that has high enough dosages, because when you got to your local farmacist which was going by the official recommendations, all they had were 200-500 IU pills, because they were not expecting that anyone would need more. So as an average citizen who does not do their research properly, if they just went into a farmacist and took the first Vitamin D supplement they saw, the chances were that they were getting one which had basically no effect.

When the dosage is right, many people experience positive effects and dormant Vitamin D levels really do go up. The sun is not required.

Also, the science is starting to question the supplementation. It’s too early to tell, but one hypothesis is that it is a biomarker at the end of a pathway and not at the beginning of it, i.e. as a consequence of a proper diet and sunlight, and not a cause of a healthy system.

An analogy would be the analysis of car exhaust, finding certain levels of CO2, and trying to fix cars with "bad exhaust" by throwing more CO2 into the intake (except maybe this would even have a negative effect by hindering combustion).

This is an hilarious (and fitting) analogy for nutrition sciences.

Reputed and trustworthy citations from scientific sources required, please.

Industrial production of vitamin D3 irradiates the 7-dehydrocholesterol extracted from sheep's lanolin with UVB light.

There is some question as to whether ergocalciferol--a chemical mainly found in fungi that produce ergosterol and have been exposed to UVB light--is biologically equivalent to cholecalciferol in humans. It can alleviate vitamin D deficiency symptoms, but it is not known with certainty whether it can produce a sufficiency. As far as I am aware, the known cases of hypervitaminosis D have resulted from ergocalciferol supplementation, rather than from cholecalciferol.

If you are supplementing with vitamin D3, the chemical you are consuming is identical to that produced in your skin under UVB irradiation. There is no evidence whatsoever that it is destroyed in or poorly absorbed by the human digestive system. If you swallow 15000 IU of vitamin D3, that is the equivalent of standing shirtless in temperate midday sun for 15 minutes, after which time you will achieve no further benefit until some time has been spent absorbing the cholecalciferol and replenishing the 7-dehydrocholesterol in your skin.

It is poorly known, that if you have to preface a statement with "it is well known", what follows is less likely to be "known" than "unattributably rumored".

"Gravity is real."

"Reputed and trustworthy citations from scientific sources required, please."

You can get less and less ridiculous from here ad nauseam, but the point is made.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/09/is-vitamin-d...

And those studies saying otherwise have been backed by a lot of questionable money: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/business/vitamin-d-michae...

Oh by the way sunscreen is terrible, it doesn't have a proven link to reducing cancer and it destroys reefs so do yourself a favor and get more sun without all the slimy goop so you can feel better AND save the planet!

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

The Mayo clinic article says:

> Taking 60,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity.

So 10,000, while it's well above the "recommended" dosage, is nowhere near the toxic level. Although when I was looking around the toxic level was 20,000, still, I've seen no guidance regarding Vitamin D that suggests 10,000 IUs/day can be toxic. (Especially if your BMI is over 25, and you're not getting much sunlight.)

A hypothesis exists that increasing vitamin K consumption in proportion to the vitamin D, and restricting calcium intake, would eliminate the main symptoms of excessive vitamin D supplementation. Nonhuman animal experimentation confirms, but it has not been tested in humans (likely due to the obvious ethical concerns).

Vitamin D, vitamin K, and calcium are all related.

I have seen guidance specifically for vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol), indicating that adverse symptoms may be observed at lower levels of supplementation than for vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), but it was quite some time ago, and I don't know if the claim was confirmed or refuted scientifically.

10,000 IU is only 1.25 mg, and vitamins aren't well regulated. It's not like you'd notice if your supplement contained 100,000 IU.

http://www.usp.org/verification-services/verified-mark

Others include NSF, UL, and consumerlab

https://www.consumerreports.org/vitamins-supplements/what-us...

There's still the chance that a manufacturing mistake could result in bad dosage but that applies to all products including medicine.

http://cphpost.dk/news/danish-health-authority-warns-of-toxi...

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28768407/

This is in cloudy wintertime Seattle. In sunny times it may be completely unnecessary.

Now I try to get my vitamin D through more normal sources by eating lots of UV-exposed mushrooms, salmon, and sardines. Plus side is these foods are all quite healthy even without the vitamin D

To be clear, that's a really useful article, just want to clarify that your intent is indeed to explain why vitamin D wouldn't work but a UVB lamp would.

It's hard to disentangle all these things.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure...

Vitamin D is something we can measure and often serves as an indicator, but large scale tests have shown limited effectiveness of supplements at resolving the issues a Vitamin D deficiency causes. e.g. We increase blood Vitamin D, but there are unknown correlative mechanisms that we aren't substituting.

So, while we wait (perhaps decades) for nutrition to become a more reliable science, I like to consider it from an evolutionary angle. That which is very dissimilar to what my ancestors experienced, like plentiful sugar or a sedentary lifestyle, is more likely to be bad for my health.

Exposure to the sun for hours a day, including the UV part, was part of our ancestors' lifestyle from the beginnings of our species, until a few decades ago. Now it is possible that this is the exception, and we should keep ourselves shielded from UV at all times even though it was what we evolved for. But...

- we don't now much about our skin microbiome, but we know we have one and it matters, and it seems unlikely that removing all UV would not impact that - we know there's an impact on vitamin D levels, but the details of that are still unknown - we know that eczema, psoriasis, and other skin conditions have been rising in recent decades, since the "always wear sunscreen" advice became common

Now, many that's all a coincidence, and UV is bad for us, and lack of UV is good for us, regardless of the fact that it's the environment we evolved for. But I'm skeptical.

Compare that to today, where UV exposure mostly means exposing the skin to massive bursts of UV for short times, at best in an effort to build skin pigmentation that isn't sufficient. That's completely different and much more damaging, leading to the general feeling that any UV is bad.

However, the change in exposure is surely true. I'm just not at all convinced that complete shielding from UV is a better choice than occasional UV.

Until recently, children would run around outside a lot during the summer, even in urban environments, and especially in suburban or rural ones.

Choosing the natural over the artificial is a reasonable default where the science is uncertain. But just remember that science has eliminated an awful lot of problems.

Also remember that natural experiences aren't always a la carte. Picking natural foods from disperate regions might be very unnatural, as is getting natural UV light after taking a shower.

Not that we would wish to have a complete absence of antibiotics. But, the attitude of "you have a virus, so take this antibiotic just in case there's also a bacteria", sounds a lot like "block all UV light from hitting your skin, at all times". I am skeptical.

Using soap has a big effect on how the UV light hits your skin, the damage it might cause, and the benefits that it might have. Of course this is all speculation on my part, but I am just warning of the idea of picking one natural thing at a time -- natural things go together.

However, anecdotally, the "mud beggars" at modern Renaissance Faires are said to have healthy skin. It could be a confusion of cause and effect, though.

I think the problem is the visible light output tends to be harsh, and the bulbs are highly inefficient, they are exensive, and they don’t last very long either.

So there would be a lot of problems to solve, not the least of which is the cultural issue you raise of scaremongering around UVB exposure in the first place.

I never use it for more than 1 minute and I alternate between facing away and towards it. For the first month I used it every day, now more like every other day or every two days.

Most other full-spectrum lamps I tried at the time on amazon didn't get even close.

If you never tried, working with these lamps is weird: turning it on in the evening or night by mistake _really_ wakes you up.

So yeah, I hope Androv kept up with the quality.

Can I ask the difference? I'm assuming a typo, but haven't experienced sun shortage for at least six years, so I'm not sure on boom / bust cycle potential with these things.

Using once every two days = use one day, then not use it the day after.

Perhaps you meant "once every three days", i.e. use it one day, then not use it for two days?

Jokes aside, skin is very photo-active and I do think lamps can help greatly against these kind deficiencies.

Most lamps emit a line spectrum though, so it is not like real sunlight. I wonder if that is the reason people going to solaria often seem to have weird skin tones. Ask a dermatologist and don't forget eye protection.

Apart from that it has the same side effects as sun exposure. Too much leads to skin aging, sunburn, cancer, etc.

I dabbled in light therapy and found the first lamp I tried [1] very effective. However I have also started receiving comments from my colleagues about my nice new facial tan, in the dead of winter. I freaked out because the lamp was in my field of view 30 minutes per day every day without any eye protection, and sent the lamp back to where I bought it. Subsequently I have tried three different LED-based lamps and they seem to have no effect. I have carefully measured the light output and placed myself at proper distance to get the requisite 10,000 lux in all cases. No dice.

Here's the kicker - that lamp [1] appears to be the one used in some of the light therapy research (that's why I got it). It is entirely possible that much of light-therapy research was contaminated by badly designed lamps. There is no FDA certification for any of this as far as I know.

[1] Carex Day-Light Classic Plus Bright Light Therapy Lamp. Supposedly UV-filtered.

Also, the lamp could be putting out UVA and not much UVB, so it could tan without producing much vitamin D.

For just the vitamin D, I'd get a "5.0" UVB lamp in a bare-bulb fixture, designed and sold for indoor avian and reptile pets. Aim at arms and hands, and away from the eyes. They're about $15 per bulb, and should be replaced every 6 months, as the UVB output degrades over time. Afterward, they work perfectly fine as compact fluorescents, behind glass or under lampshades, for several more months, albeit shaped inconveniently for some fixtures.

A "10.0" bulb is for desert-species pets. The UV output is too high for the overall lamp brightness, and may damage your eyesight, as human pupils don't constrict enough. I suppose you could wear sunglasses, but that seems counterproductive to just buying a lower-UV lamp.

I'm pretty sure the answer to that is that they do not.

Question, what were your health issues and what changes did you see that quickly?

I was supplementing with a lot of magnesium. Sleep returned very quickly, my need for supplementing magnesium also dropped in days.

It has been like a permanent +5 to constitution; I am now almost through my second winter without getting sick, something inconceivable for me as a kid growing up with asthma and a whole range of puffers, and always prone to debilitating sinus infections that told hold in January and never really let up sometime around April.

I am at 43 latitude so I only start taking it in mid-November and start weening myself off it in late March (you never really know if/when spring will happen up here in Toronto :)

Which one do you recommend?

Supplementing with D3 had very limited effect.

Non sequitur. Pills are not food.