[BurningCycles]

>In Finland we put Vitamin D in milk that’s sold on normal shops.

I'd wager it's the same in all the Nordic countries, at least it's the same here in Sweden.

A couple a months ago when I spoke to my dad, he told me he had a checkup because he had been unusually tired, turned out that the only thing the testing showed was that he had d-vitamin deficiency.

What surprised me is that he was given prescription d-vitamins, since you can buy them anywhere without prescription.

[pkaye]

You can get larger doses of vitamin D in one pill as a prescription. Like 20000 IU once every week or two instead of daily.

Also there is vitamin D2 and D3. The normal stuff you take is called D2. The D3 is made by the kidneys from converting D2. But those with certain diseases, the kidneys don't do the conversion so they provide vitamin D3 in the form called calcitriol. Its something I need to take due to my kidney failure.

[nicoburns]

At least in the UK, it's pretty easy to get D3 over the counter too. I've been buying D3 drops off of Amazon.

[pkaye]

Looks like I misunderstood it. Calcitriol is different from D3. Normally your body converts D3 to calcitriol but those with certain diseases will not get it converted.

Calcitriol is actually the most confusing of my medications to manage since the dosage needs to be adjusted based on monthly blood tests. Things like amount of sun exposure can swing my numbers around. And it interacts with so many blood test numbers like PTH, phosphorus and calcium levels.

[disgruntledphd2]

My wife was given these, during the early part of her pregnancy. I too, was surprised that they came via prescription.

The dosage did work out to be 50x what was in the standard products though.

[noir_lord]

UK government changed it's advice to recommend supplementation in the winter months (unsurprising given how far north the UK is).