[throckmortra]

My first winter in NYC was very rough and I didn't understand why at first. I got a blood test at the doc and he said my vitamin D was very low. I committed to walking in the sun at least a half hour a day, weather permitting, and I never really had issues again. Part of the issue was I was spending a lot of time walking outside but not in sunlight due to the tall buildings. Just my anecdotal 2c

[carabiner]

I live in Seattle and have been depressed for a while. I had my Vitamin D3 levels checked via blood test, and they were really low. Started taking 5,000 IU per day, and I feel exactly the same as before.

[olah_1]

I have never felt an affect from oral vitamins in any situation.

Sitting in the sun however seems to do more than just “increase vitamin d levels”. The sensation is just overwhelmingly lovely. It seems to reduce cortisol, makes you feel tired in a euphoric way. Animals love to warm their fur in shafts of sunlight too.

Perhaps we should be thinking more in terms of joyful activities in general and less trying to biohack.

[AlbertCory]

> Animals love to warm their fur in shafts of sunlight too.

Indeed. My dog always lies in the sun for a while when he goes outside. Once he's warm enough, he moves to the shade. Animals know.

[supertofu]

My blind cat always seeks sun spots as well!

[__ryan__]

That narrative might work for you, but the bio-hack narrative might work for others.

Maybe the takeaway is to go into things with a positive attitude but also take a personal inventory and adapt if something that is supposed to work doesn’t work for you.

[rohitb91]

100% the same for me as well. When I sit in the sun I feel invigorated, I Feel a rush of pleasant feelings throughout my body.

I take vitamin D regularly, 4000iu+, and I don’t feel anything remarkable. With the sun it’s almost an instant jolt of joy.

[hnick]

Yes sunlight makes me extremely tired, like if I go for a walk or a picnic or something I'll end up far more exhausted than anything else can explain. I wonder if it's some kind of overcompensating effect due to my typical lack of it.

[cashsterling]

It can take a while for your Vit-D levels to rise, even with supplementing 5k IU per day... I would check your levels again.

And, of course, Vit-D is not the only contributor to depression so it might be good to see a GP and/or get a general blood panel done.

[carabiner]

To answer a bunch of questions: Yes, I had bloodwork done later showing my D3 level in the typical range. Whether that was due to the supplement, or diet, or lifestyle I can't say. I take 1 pill (USP certified) on average 2-3x per week. So not every day.

I've got treatment resistant depression and have tried probably everything else you're about to suggest. The only thing that kind of helped was dihydrotestosterone, but that is now illegal in the US. Also tianeptine and vorinostat, but also very hard to get in the US these days.

[trts]

Also in Seattle, also recovered from treatment resistant depression. I recommend looking into TMS. I wish I had done it much sooner.

Wish you luck, it’s been an especially gloomy year here.

[carabiner]

Tried it through Neurostim in Bellevue. Didn't work. Waiting for the Stanford SAINT protocol to be approved.

[tsol]

Did you try vorinostat yourself to treat depression, or was it coincidental? I never heard of that for depression, but looking at the mechanism it can make sense-- some HDAC inhibitors have powerful effects on mental issues

[pmoriarty]

"I've got treatment resistant depression and have tried probably everything else you're about to suggest."

I bet you haven't tried MDMA therapy.

[laurentlbm]

I have TRD too and tried so many things. It sucks.

[femiagbabiaka]

10k IU's a day is what it took me. I found that value almost by accident, while starting to follow Stan Efferding's Vertical Diet, which recommends that as a part of a suite of daily vitamins (it is much better than the name belies). IMO anyone who works a desk job should take 10k IU's daily. I fell out of the habit during covid quarantine and my levels (and my mood) were dangerously low when I came out on the other side.

[penetrarthur]

I wasn't depressed but had low energy levels. I started taking 24,000 IU a day and within two weeks I had way more energy, constantly elevated mood and just felt happy overall. I recently lowered the dose to 12,000 IU per day. I did blood test before that and I had super low Vitamin D3 levels and I live quite far up north.

[mupuff1234]

Did you do another blood test to check if the levels changed?

[m348e912]

I've run into this too. It's worth noting that there are a few different types of vitamin D.

ergocalciferol

               - vitamin d2 derived from plants

cholecalciferol

               - vitamin d3 from sunlight

               - vitamin d3 derived from lanolin washed from lambs wool

               - vitamin d3 derived from lichen

I've tried a few different types, many don't seem to make me feel any different. Liquid vitamin d3 [0] seems to work well at doses above 5k IU.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Designs-Health-Emulsi-D3-Emulsified-V...

[Trasmatta]

Since you're in Seattle, check out bright light therapy as well.

[trash3]

Check your diet. Just because you take vitamin d supplements doesn't mean it gets absorbed into your bloodstream.

[DoreenMichele]

Seattle is extremely damp and temperate, so you see a lot of mold and allergens there year round.

If redressing your vitamin D levels doesn't fix it, look for hidden mold and/or allergies.

[civilized]

In this and the GP we have Vitamin D and depression in a nutshell.

[TameAntelope]

5k IUs is well beyond anything your body has a use for, and in fact is above what your body can tolerate! [0]

> RDA: The Recommended Dietary Allowance for adults 19 years and older is 600 IU daily for men and women, and for adults >70 years it is 800 IU daily.

> UL: The Tolerable Upper Intake Level is the maximum daily intake unlikely to cause harmful effects on health. The UL for vitamin D for adults and children ages 9+ is 4,000 IU.

So it's possible your 5k IUs were causing you more harm than good.

[0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamin-d/

[wholien]

Highly doubt 5k IUs is the issue. Some select quotes from "Vitamin D Is Not as Toxic as Was Once Thought: A Historical and an Up-to-Date Perspective" by Michael Holick in Mayo Clinic Proceedings [0]:

> Ekwaru et al recently reported on more than 17,000 healthy adult volunteers participating in a preventative health program and taking varying doses of vitamin D up to 20,000 IU/d. These patients did not demonstrate any toxicity, and the blood level of 25(OH)D in those taking even 20,000 IU/d was less than 100 ng/mL.

> The evidence is clear that vitamin D toxicity is one of the rarest medical conditions and is typically due to intentional or inadvertent intake of extremely high doses of vitamin D (usually in the range of >50,000-100,000 IU/d for months to years).

[0]: Holick, https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(15)...

[1]: Ekwaru et al, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25372709/

[TameAntelope]

[0] is an editorial and [1] seemingly went unpublished, other than in PLOS One, which means it goes through a very different peer review process than most other journals (that is, no peer review on its content, only on its methodology).

[voldacar]

The "tolerable upper limit" for vitamin D is set absurdly low.

I have perused the literature on D toxicity and each case involved someone taking at least 100k IU per day, and usually way more than that. I take 50k IU per day every winter and have never had an issue. Blood calcium levels normal, etc

5k IU is an average dose and will absolutely not cause harm.

[TameAntelope]

> "I have perused the literature"

...and you are?

> 5k IU is an average dose and will absolutely not cause harm.

This is wildly irresponsible to post, and should be removed from HN.

[voldacar]

>...and you are?

Someone who is wholly uninterested in the credential theory of epistemology. Back to reddit with that, please.

> This is wildly irresponsible to post, and should be removed from HN.

You don't seem to know what the TUIL actually means. The tolerable upper intake level of a substance is not the actual safe upper limit, it just guarantees that a certain level is safe. In the case of vitamin D, the actual safe upper limit is likely an order of magnitude higher, which was even acknowledged by the people who, very conservatively, set the TUIL at 4k IU.[0] If 4k IU is completely safe (which it is), then there is nothing at all irresponsible about suggesting that 5k IU is completely safe (which it is), unless that extra 1000 IU somehow accomplishes some deleterious effect, which it doesn't.

That extra 1000 IU between 4k and 5k is simply insignificant. To put all these numbers in context, the body synthesizes the equivalent of anywhere from 4k-12k IU per day from sunlight,[1][2] and possibly 20k+ IU if you're sunbathing with most of your skin exposed.[3] So really, a 5k dose is in the low to moderate range. If 5k IU of vitamin D is scary or irresponsible, then getting even a little sun exposure is really scary and irresponsible!

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17209171/

[1] https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/61.3.638S

[2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2007.03.004

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18290718/

[TameAntelope]

> Someone who is wholly uninterested in the credential theory of epistemology.

So nobody qualified to answer this question? That's what I expected. In medicine more so than in nearly any other field, qualified experts should be the only people to express opinions publicly, considering the potential negative outcomes.

You really shouldn't be giving medical advice on any website, Reddit or Hacker News. This is on the same level as anti-vaxx shit, I hope you realize.

This, more than Reddit, is a place where qualified people discuss topics. If you'd like to wildly speculate, that sounds more like what happens on Reddit.

[Sargos]

Are you sure? 5k being a safe average dose seems to be corroborated across the internet and the abstracts of some papers I've seen.

[TameAntelope]

And yet, not a single reputable journal will publish those papers, the medical community won't change the recommendations, and those studies go unreplicated.

It seems like there's an undereducated underground on the Internet that has the hubris to think they know more than the medical consensus, so what you're seeing are the effects of that hubris, nothing more.

Turns out Vitamin D is the anti-vaxx of computer nerds. Pretty hypocritical, but unsurprising.

[nicoburns]

That assumes your body is absorbing all of it. I suspect a lot of people's aren't, hence the high doses. I have found for example that 1000iu in the form of drops under the tongue has dramatically more effect than 1000iu in the form of a chewable tablet.

[mikenew]

Those numbers are wrong by an order of magnitude, because the original estimation was based on faulty math. The actual dose needed to bring serum levels up for most people would be far higher.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4210929/

[TameAntelope]

I'm going to go ahead and trust Harvard Medicine over a single study that has since gone largely uncited, and was published in "Nutrients" which carries an h-index of 115 (Nature, for example, carries an h-index of 1226) [0][1].

[0] https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=19700188323&ti...

[1] https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=21206&tip=sid&...

[beowulfey]

You should never judge an article by where it was published (some exceptions of course), only in the quality of the work. Impact factors are loosely a measurement of significance of the work, in terms of how broadly applicable they are to the fields of science. It is absolutely not a strict measure of the expected quality of the article.

Also, for what it's worth, most of the articles referenced in the Harvard Medicine review referring to dosages are from before 2010, so they may be out of date.

[TameAntelope]

And why should I trust you? You've given a decree, "Thou shalt not judge a paper based on where it was published!" and then don't give any reasons why that would be the case.

Also, I'm not qualified to judge a paper by its work quality, I need to rely on the experts in the field for that, and a decent proxy for that judgement is where a paper gets published, so by looking at where a paper was published, I am judging a paper by its quality.

[numinoid]

Anecdotally, I had to bump up to 10,000 IU to see a difference.

[xwowsersx]

did you get blood work done again though after taking the 5K IUs for a while? it's possible that the supplementation didn't bring your Vit D levels to within range and you need 10K IUs+. Of course, I'm not suggesting this would necessarily help with your depression, but just pointing that you gotta be scientific/anecdotal when it comes to supplementation/blood panels

[tomatowurst]

5000 IU is really too much. At best 2000, 2500 IU is good.

[Vecr]

No, 5000 IU per day is generally considered the highest non megadose. Make sure it is good quality (D3, USP in the US), and it should be fine. Some people say also to take K2 (also make sure it's USP in the US), but I'm not sure the exact supposed mechanism of protection from adverse effects from D3. Something about preventing calcium from leaching from the bones and accumulating in the blood, I think.

[pmoriarty]

"Vitamin D controls the absorption of calcium into the blood. Vitamin K2 controls where that calcium ends up.

"Over-supplementation of vitamin D3 without ample vitamin K2 leads to problems of excess calcium.

"If calcium isn’t laid into bone, it will find itself in other tissues, like your arteries. Calcium in the arteries is BAD. It contributes to atherosclerosis and vessel stiffness."

https://dralexrinehart.com/articles/the-vitamin-d-and-vitami...

[dragonwriter]

Unless you are a doctor that has been monitoring the poster, you have no idea if that is true. My blood levels are consistently deficient when I’m not taking 10,000 IU/day (and this is with a fair amount of daily sun exposure.) People have widely varying needs.

[LinuxBender]

I use 60,000 to 90,000 IU's per day and have been doing so for years. The most I have taken in a 24 hour period is 140,000 IU's. There is no way I could have started off at those levels however. It would have induced major hypercalcemia had I done that prior to mobilizing all the stored/misplaced calcium in my gut and vasculature. I am not suggesting anyone else do this. One must have a specific need when doing this.

I only mention this to say that one can go well above the RDA/RDI that are highly contested to be far too low for modern diets, environmental inputs and lifestyles.

[TameAntelope]

> Taking 60,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity. This level is many times higher than the U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for most adults of 600 IU of vitamin D a day. [0]

I think you may be poisoning yourself.

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

[LinuxBender]

That would certainly be true had I done that from day one as I had mentioned. Their documentation as with most medical documentation is based on the lowest common denominators. They will not risk explaining why one might do what I am doing.

[TameAntelope]

It seems true without qualification.

What you're saying here has a lot in common with "woo", I hope you realize.

[ekianjo]

the 600 IU RDA is clearly a mistake in an earlier publication. it should be 10x that.

[dragonwriter]

No, 600 IU (15mcg) is the actual RDA. There's a lot of belief that it's an error, but it's not a typographical error.

[dralley]

The dose they claim to be taking is 100x that, not 10x.

[stjohnswarts]

That's a crazy amount. I had a very low blood test started supplementing with k2/5000 vitamin d several years ago and my blood levels have been fine ever since.

[voldacar]

How much K2 are you taking?

[LinuxBender]

100mcg for each initial 5000 IU's for the day but I stop at 800mcg of K2 MK-7 regardless. I sometimes also take K2 MK-4 in addition to that. I also get a small amount of K2 from eggs.

[dralley]

5000 isn't too much when you're catching up from a deficiency.

[BenjiWiebe]

I took 15k IU daily (at the advice of my doctor) for several months at one point to get my levels back up. I don't remember the numbers, but my levels were extremely low.

[mountainriver]

It really depends on the person. You just need to monitor your blood levels

[KennyBlanken]

In the northeast during wintertime, it's impossible to accumulate enough vitamin D from sunlight, especially not from such a short period of time, fully clothed.

Even if you were not fully clothed, there's so little UV making to you because of the sun's low angle and distance.

[tayo42]

I finally got a chance to move south and this was the first winter I didn't spend being weird and existential about everything. Just kind of enjoyed life.

[radu_floricica]

That was most likely seasonal affective disorder (SAD, or winter blues). I've had a bad winter once something like 20 years ago, and it was so bad that I'm still obsessed with proper indoor lighting. tl;dr of it is that you want soft, yellow light in the evenings, and full spectrum, much more powerful than you think in the rest of the day, especially mornings.

[throwingrocks]

How did you narrow down the issue to sunlight exposure? Seems plausible that, being new to NYC as you say, there could have been an adjustment period that you eventually moved past?

Not trying to dismiss your experience. I just haven’t experienced making one small change in my life and seeing significant benefits.

[zamfi]

If you were walking around outside in the winter and this helped, that's pretty good evidence that sun exposure is beneficial for you outside of vitamin D production.

In the winter months in NYC, the UV intensity is too low to cause vitamin D production in the skin.

[pigtailgirl]

wildly speculating from an evolutionary perspective - it reasons that we'd evolve such that our moods are better in light - otherwise there would be another push to stagnate vs become exposed to more - such that evolution can do it's thing - evolution tends towards evolution after all -