[watertom]

Since I was a child I’ve been a walking respiratory illness machine. Bronchitis, sinusitis, flu, pneumonia, common cold, etc.

During “flu” season I was usually sick for the entire season with a rotating assortment of viral respiratory issues, this lasted until about 7 years ago.

8 years ago in September I started taking 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 and 180mg of K2 daily.

I haven’t had a deputies illness since. My children were getting sick at their normal clip, my wife the same, but not me. I went from being sick all the time to not getting sick ever. I made one change in my life, adding the D3 and K2.

After 2 years of not getting sick my wife and children started supplementing with D3 and K2, everyone stopped getting sick. My son went off to college and stopped taking the D3 and K2 and during the winter semester he got sick twice, he had me sent him the D3 and K2, he hasn’t been sick since.

It’s a small sample size, but even at 10,000 IU daily D3 is not dangerous or expensive, the only caveat seems to be that you need to supplement with K2 or you can cause gardening if the arteries due to calcification.

My doctor thinks it’s a lot of nonsense, but then again he wants every patient on blood pressure and cholesterol medication “just in case”.

[tomtomistaken]

I had anxiety attacks and back pain for years. Maybe it’s just a weird and strong placebo effect, but after starting to take vitamin D these things were simply gone.

[arethuza]

I found the same - I was starting to get anxiety first thing in the morning - started taking Vitamin D and it simply stopped. At the time I had no idea that Vitamin D could have that effect.

[neuronic]

My allergies started to dramatically improve after taking 8-10k IU vitamin D daily. This isnt medical evidence and may be pure luck but I am just adding to the anecdotes.

[abecedarius]

Another data point: 5000 IU of D3 daily for years, after testing initially at around 20 ng/dL (iir the units c); this spring my level from a blood test was >90 in the first test since then. It seems like taking 10000 IU instead would've been overkill for me.

I supplement K2 and Mg also (plus a few unrelated things). I also get sick less, though I made enough other changes I can't tell whether to credit the supplements. (The K2 definitely helped a skin issue -- I could reliably bring it back by stopping taking the K2. That's probably a pretty idiosyncratic problem of mine, but it's an example of a supplement clearly helping.)

Chris Masterjohn has suggested that high levels of vitamin D could make you more susceptible to the virus, because some papers suggest that D upregulates ACE2 expression. He thinks it's best to aim for a blood level in the 30-35 range. I don't know how seriously to take this suggestion. For now I reduced my supplement to 1000IU/day.

[Daishiman]

What skin condition was helped? I have a skin condition that is anecdotally helped by supplementation but I see few or no controlled trials.

[abecedarius]

It looks like psoriasis on my heels, but I haven't sought a diagnosis. A regular bit of collagen also helps against it. I suspect I have some gut malabsorption issue and that's why supplements can make an especially clear difference in my case, though this is guessing on top of guessing.

[_0ffh]

>180mg of K2 daily

Sorry the nitpicking, but may I assume you mean 180ug? That would be the normal order of magnitude for K2 supplementation.

[bencollier49]

Ironically there are papers suggesting that blood pressure and cholesterol medication is bad for people if they get Covid.

[dehrmann]

How is that ironic? The doctor's recommendation sounded like it was pre-covid, or just their standard recommendation.

[yumraj]

Why K2? is there any relation between D3 and K2, or is that just something that you're taking?

Also, what dosage of D3 and K2 are you using for your kids?

[jdhn]

I believe K2 is taken along with D3 in order to prevent the calcium from hardening in your veins.

[_0ffh]

Yes, both soft tissue and vascular calcification. Typically you should supplement around 40ug of K2 (mk7 all-trans, these details seem to matter!) for every 1000IU of D3.

[StavrosK]

Can't you take less D3 daily to prevent calcification? 10k IU sounds like a large amount, no?

[jerf]

As the article says, D works with other vitamins to do a lot of things. It works with K to help calcium get into your bones. Otherwise you can absorb it and it can hang around in places it's not really supposed to, and that turns out to not be a good thing. You're probably better off with D + K (if you need it) than trying to skimp on D.

(I have celiac [1], and I had to learn about this connection the hard way. The horrid thing is that my normal daily lunch was an enormous bowl of leafy greens, exactly where you're supposed to get vitamin K from, and I still had to supplement it. Calcium in the wrong places was one of the contributing factors to my heart issues in the link. I still have to be a bit careful not to eat too much hard cheese, but only slightly more careful than a normal person who faces potentially blocking themselves up anyhow.)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22454099

[StavrosK]

I see, thank you. I'm wondering whether I should supplement D myself, but I live in a sunny country. I should get some blood tests to check first, I guess.

[neuronic]

Doctors usually recommend 1k IU per day but this has been shown to be problematic. 8k-10k IU is much better. Spending a day on the beach will net you many 10ks of vitamin D (given full body exposure to the sun).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/

[StavrosK]

Ah, okay, we usually spend threeish months on the beach, so we should be good.

[kmonsen]

Which supplements do you get?