[HN Gopher] Regular use of Vitamin D supplement is associated wi...
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Regular use of Vitamin D supplement is associated with fewer
melanoma cases
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-07-30 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Use of vitamin D supplement is also probably correlated with
| sunscreen use. That is, health-conscious people use both.
| accrual wrote:
| Nice to see more benefits of Vitamin D. Highly recommend the
| supplement for tech workers who spend a lot of time indoors. I
| take 125mcg/5000IU a day when I wake up and it's subtle, but I
| just feel a little better with it. Sports Research is a good
| brand (not affiliated).
|
| Nothing better than getting some real sun though, especially in
| the morning.
| cheald wrote:
| A lot of people in the first world are heavily deficient in
| vitamin D, and deficiency is linked to a whole host of health
| issues and vulnerabilities. It's dirt cheap and essentially
| completely safe below toxicity levels (which are quite
| difficult to hit - I take 10,000 IU daily, and even with that
| my bloodwork shows me in the lower quartile of the normal
| range).
|
| Its metabolite is a steroidal hormone, so it's pretty obvious
| why it would be beneficial for anti-inflammatory purposes, but
| it also modulates some key cardiovascular gene expression, too.
| globular-toast wrote:
| That seems like far too much, especially if you ever go
| outside. In the UK doctors recommend no more than 1,000
| IU/day during the winter months. Any more than that is only
| if you are actually deficient. It seems really hard to get
| clear answers on it, though. People taking 10x the
| recommended dose of something seems strange. It makes me
| think it's being stored somewhere that isn't your blood. It's
| fat-soluble after all. Why on earth would you take so much
| anyway?
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| He is actually deficient, and 10k IU is not that unusual.
| cheald wrote:
| I get bloodwork done twice annually, so I have a very
| accurate idea of what my levels are. The dosage is the
| recommendation from my doctor based on my bloodwork. The
| goal isn't just staving off seasonal affective disorder,
| but actually trying to get me roughly into the middle of
| the ideal range because of its myriad health benefits.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I second the Sports Research brand it's my favorite based on
| their obvious careful choice of fillers.
|
| Anyway, yes the full spectrum of the sun provides much more,
| not only UV for vitamin D but the red/infrared part of the
| spectrum which is great for cellular energy.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Also, ask your doctor to get yours tested! A couple years ago,
| my D was on the low end (31.7ng/mL; 30-100 is normal). I've
| been taking 5000IU of D3 since then, and a lab last month had
| me at 59.1. That seems to be about the perfect dose for me, and
| it's dirt cheap.
| lowmagnet wrote:
| I just take D3 50K a week, what a doctor once recommended
| when I was tested and found almost with something like 6
| ng/dL of D in my system.
|
| BTW, did they tell you to back off or cut your dose? at 59
| ng/mL you're in the danger zone.
| fsh wrote:
| I can only read the abstract, but this doesn't look very solid at
| all. It's a self-reported non-randomized study, and an absurdly
| large number of participants has had some type of skin cancer
| (184 out of 276). This makes the results extremely susceptible to
| selection bias.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I see research on essential vitamins all the time on HN. It
| really makes you think. There's cohorts who will debunk the
| studies based on methodology or glaring flaws. There's cohorts
| who will provide anecdotal evidence in support. There's even
| cohorts who will bring up a history lesson/"conspiracy" we all
| forgot about.
|
| It really makes you wonder about essential vitamins though.
| There's so many of these types of studies that continue to show
| benefits of getting the right amount of vitamin D, but there's
| equally enough noise to tell you that you don't need it.
|
| But for countries like America, experts continue to weigh in that
| we don't get enough essential vitamins and minerals through our
| diets, so wouldn't it just be common sense that many people are
| deficient and therefore should supplement?
|
| Wasn't this the entire controversy of Pauling for example when he
| pushed Vitamin C? That the RDA amounts are not enough and should
| be highly personalized?
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56068/table/summarytab...
| (Recommendations)
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-020-0558-y (Deficiency
| Worldwide)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Two points:
|
| > experts continue to weigh in that we don't get enough
| essential vitamins and minerals through our diets
|
| First, would be better to list some specifics rather than
| "experts say". But even if so, saying that people don't get
| enough of some micronutrient X from food, it doesn't
| necessarily follow that supplementation with pills will lead to
| better health (except in some specific and extreme
| circumstances that rarely affect people these days, e.g.
| scurvy).
|
| Second, this was _not_ the entire controversy around Pauling 's
| vitamin C fantasy. His recommended doses were orders of
| magnitude larger than recommended amounts - it wasn't just
| about being "more personalized". Nevermind that Pauling's
| vitamin C theories have been thoroughly disproven.
| mandmandam wrote:
| I think it's absolutely bonkers - it really blows me away -
| that we have such debate on the effects of single molecules,
| studied for untold millions of human hours.
|
| And yet many people think we can improve on nature; tinkering
| and toying with vastly more complex machinery and life, that we
| barely understand.
|
| We are still discovering entire structures in the human body,
| ffs, yet are seemingly happy to allow vast monocultures of
| corporate and for-profit GM crops; 'trusting the science'.
|
| The lies are as thin as our topsoil's gonna be soon. I love the
| idea of scientific progress, and understanding things, but this
| attitute of 'trust the men in white coats with everything even
| though we don't understand Vitamin C or D all that well' is
| truly mind-boggling.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we have such debate on the effects of single molecules_
|
| Most complex systems have simple limiters, almost by
| definition of the latter. You don't need to solve fluid
| dynamics and combustion physics to understand that more air
| through a carburettor causes an internal combustion engine to
| run faster.
| docflabby wrote:
| People who avoid the sun more likely to take vitamin D
| supplements?
| reader5000 wrote:
| People who avoid the sun are less likely to care about health
| overall and therefore less likely to take vitD supplements?
| jmckib wrote:
| I don't have access to the full paper, but I would expect that
| they at least tried to control for sun exposure.
|
| In general, if you can think of an obvious confounding factor
| in about five seconds, then it's a safe assumption that
| professional researchers thought of it too.
| Calavar wrote:
| > In general, if you can think of an obvious confounding
| factor in about five seconds, then it's a safe assumption
| that professional researchers thought of it too.
|
| I work in academic medicine. I read a lot of papers. This is
| not at all a given in my experience, except maybe in the
| tippy top journals (Nature, NEJM). When in doubt, read the
| paper, see if they mention the confounder you thought of.
| surfpel wrote:
| > safe assumption that professional researchers thought of it
| too
|
| Research should be able to stand up to scrutiny. The
| scientific process _depends_ on it.
|
| Given the ongoing reproducibility crisis and plethora of
| garbage research coming out of academia, I'm not assuming
| anything about any research I see.
| Gimpei wrote:
| They probably have, but that doesn't mean they have the
| necessary data to actually address the confounds. Often there
| is a trade off between what is most provable and what is most
| novel. Publishing incentives being what they are, novel
| invariably wins.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeah... doctors recommend supplementing vitamin D if you don't
| get much sun. This almost feels comedic.
| lowmagnet wrote:
| Doctors recommend supplementing vitamin D if you have a
| measured deficiency. Most people naturally settle to 20 ng/mL
| or higher, and just incidental exposure, or eating certain
| foods can help you either absorb or synthesize it.
|
| There are also people, like me, who no matter what, we can't
| make as much vitamin D for whatever cluster of genetic
| factors causes that. Some of us are always tired unless we
| take 50,000 IU of D3 a week.
| garciasn wrote:
| That's over double the dose considered "safe". Obviously,
| I'm not suggesting you do otherwise; it's just way outside
| the bounds of what most adults would do unless directed to
| by their physician.
| cj wrote:
| Did the study not control for confounding factors?
| alsobrsp wrote:
| It did, they state that right in the summary.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Conversely, those people who refuse to ever cover up "cause you
| need vitamin D".
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Tweedledee: People with less sun exposure both intentional or
| unintentional may supplement more.
|
| Tweedledum: Low Vitamin D weakens your immune system. Having a
| weakened immune system increases your odds of skin cancer.
| krona wrote:
| I think just as likely is the general problem of people who
| take supplements being generally more conscientious and less
| likely to engage in risky behaviours (e.g. wearing sunscreen in
| summer)
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| Or they are supplementing because they don't get much sun to
| begin with
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah my immediate thought too. Give 2500 rabid tanners vitamin
| D and let's look at skin cancer rates in 10 years vs the
| population of rabid tanners.
| jasonsb wrote:
| This is the most plausible reason.
| experimenting wrote:
| The most plausible reason is that the scientific peer-
| reviewed result is correct, not the tiring "correlation does
| not imply causatian" commenter on HN who at most skimmed the
| paper.
|
| 2009: > Epidemiological data show an inverse relationship
| between vitamin D levels and breast cancer incidence. In
| addition, there is a well-documented association between
| vitamin D intake and the risk of breast cancer. Low vitamin D
| intake has also been indicated in colorectal carcinogenesis.
| A vitamin D deficiency has also been documented in patients
| with prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, as well as multiple
| myeloma. Larger randomized clinical trials should be
| undertaken in humans to establish the role of vitamin D
| supplementation in the prevention of these cancers.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| it's a small difference in a small group. And relying on
| self reporting for sun exposure.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Here is the description how they measured the impact of sun
| exposure to the results:
|
| > The exposure of skin to UV radiation was clarified with
| different questions. The self-estimated lifetime exposure was
| studied with the following question 'How often have you exposed
| yourself to sunlight during your lifetime?' The answer options
| were (1) 'seldom', (2) 'occasionally', (3) 'often', or (4)
| 'very often'. The sunburn history was studied with the
| following question: how often has your skin been burned due to
| sunlight during your lifetime? The answer options were (1)
| 'seldom', (2) 'occasionally', or (3) 'often'. The answer
| options for the question of 'Main environment in working
| history' were (1) 'outdoor', (2) 'indoor', or (2) 'variably
| both'.
|
| They saw approximately the same distribution of sun exposure
| across the different test groups, it looks like.
| bravoetch wrote:
| Vitamin D is also readily available in food. You can get plenty
| by eating brown portabella mushrooms. I often read sunshine vs
| supplements discussed, and rarely food sources.
| gochi wrote:
| Vitamin D isn't in high enough sources in foods. Not unless
| you're eating a ~cup of them a day or in the days you aren't
| taking the supplement. This is important because the study went
| into differences between "occasional" and "regular" vitamin D
| supplement users.
|
| Mushrooms are very good for many other reasons and should be a
| staple in most weekly diets.
| gp wrote:
| Unfortunately I cannot get full article access, but from the
| abstract it sounds like they did not control for actual sun
| exposure.
|
| It would seem to me that those who self medicate with vitamin D
| are those who know they do not get sufficient sun exposure, and
| would necessarily also be those at reduced risk of melanoma.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Like most nutrition/diet studies it's entirely correlational.
| Equally likely that people who take Vitamin D also just take
| better care of their health in other ways like just using
| sunscreen. Maybe it is true but it's so hard to draw any
| conclusion from a study like this.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I was told recently that US Doctors have lost their license over
| this topic; no idea if that is true.
| kstrauser wrote:
| No. My memory of the news stories were that some doctors
| preached it as a miracle preventative/cure, which let to
| patients neglecting other more effective preventatives because
| they thought they were safe from getting sick.
|
| I think any doctor would tell you to take supplements if your
| lab tests showed that you're low. There's nothing controversial
| in that advice.
| experimenting wrote:
| For a long time, the Mayo Clinic claimed vitamin D
| supplementation to combat SARS infections had no scientific
| proof and was possibly dangerous.
|
| If such an authoritative source claims pseudo science and
| danger, your annecdote could very well be true.
| lowmagnet wrote:
| Low vitamin D reduces correct responses by the immune system,
| and contributes to autoimmune disorders and results in higher
| possibility of infection.
| [deleted]
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