[nickff]

While I find your comment enjoyably pithy, in the case of vitamin D, many humans are currently living at latitudes which they are not suited to (skin being too dark to generate enough vitamin D given the insolation), and eating diets which do not provide them with sufficient amounts of it (the carnivore diets of Inuits and similar groups being a good contrast).

[djtango]

Amusing how thanks to the war on cholesterol the UK unravelled a lot of egg eating habits - a natural source of vitamin D.

The UK also consumed a lot more liver than it does today I imagine...

[Theodores]

Vitamin D supplementation in the UK - now there is a fascinating topic.

With the industrial revolution there was a problem of kids in cities getting rickets. This was due to a lack of vitamin C and that was due to a lack of daylight due to the smog.

The solution was to take the kids out of the city so they could spend time in the countryside.

However, along with the industrial revolution came steam trains, and, with steam trains, it became a lot easier to get fresh food from the farm to the city table.

Milk became an early commodity for this railway trade, in the days before refrigeration. Bottling had to be invented too, along with pasteurisation to get the modern milk product. They fortified it with vitamin D and, in time, made it mandatory in schools for kids to have dinky bottles of milk for their morning break. All kids hated the stuff but it was 'good for them' and good for keeping farmers gainfully employed.

Then the clean air acts came along, with the first street to ban fires in fireplaces being opposite the smoke free coal factory, the factory being anything but smoke free. Deindustrialisation happened too, so there were no cities with smokestack industries at their heart.

With clean air there was no longer any need to fortify the milk with vitamin D, so that stopped. From now on, kids would get their vitamin D doing things such as playing in the school playground.

But then we became seriously car dependent and the age of the free-range child was over. With 'stranger danger' and screens (initially just TV) taking over, we entered a new era of people not getting enough daylight again.

Along the way vitamin D has been downgraded, much like Pluto, from being a 'vitamin' to being a hormone. A lot of people want to point this out and explain the science to you. From hearing how some talk about vitamin D, it sounds like the recommended supplements are all over the place.

Clearly there are millions, if not billions that seem to be living just fine with not much sunlight in their lives and on no vitamin D supplements. Where's the rickets? Good question, but then, in Antarctica, where there are months of darkness to endure, they are on something like 20,000 units a day, and they probably know what they are doing.

Maybe following their example for this winter could be my next 'nutrition experiment'. Sometimes, when there is so much conflicting information, it is best to do an n=1 experiment with one's own body.

[thewebguyd]

> Maybe following their example for this winter could be my next 'nutrition experiment'

Anecdotal and a sample size of 1, but I tried supplementing Vitamin D last year in the winter months. I live in the PNW, which between October and March, the sun is too low to trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin to see if it had any effect on my energy levels and mood, I suffer from seasonal affective disorder pretty severely.

Taking 5,000 IU daily had no noticeable effect for me. A slight increase in energy levels but not significant enough that I'd be confident in attributing it to supplementation. I was hesitant to supplement more without medical advice and a blood test.

That's not to say Vitamin D isn't important (it is), and the scientists in Antartica definitely know what they're doing, but it's more to say YMMV.

For me, just making an effort to do more physical activity outdoors during the dark months had more of an impact

[seba_dos1]

~5000 IU daily between February and May was barely enough to raise 25(OH) D level in my blood from 9 to 30 ng/ml.

Depending on who you ask, 30 is either the bound between "deficient" and "insufficient", or between "insufficient" and "sufficient". Regardless of who you ask, there's plenty of headroom until "excess".

[rcxdude]

Yes, it's possible but relatively hard to overdose on vitamin D, and due to a cock-up in some calculations in a study, until recently the recommended supplement amounts were about an order of magnitude too low: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5541280/

[rcxdude]

The NHS does recommend that everyone in the UK 'consider' vitamin D supplementation during the autumn and winter: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-... , because the amount of sunlight available in those months is not enough to maintain a healthy level.

[markhahn]

I don't think vit c has anything to do with daylight/smog. vit d, definitely (and so not rickets).

[LtdJorge]

> This was due to a lack of vitamin C and that was due to a lack of daylight

I think you also meant Vitamin D there

[lawlessone]

Are they that unpopular? Seem like a staple of an English Breakfast.

[djtango]

Couldn't quickly find any sources for the UK specifically but this should suffice

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/

[hinkley]

It’s criminal that the US sent Somalian refuges to live in Minnesota. Those are some seriously brown people in the land of no vitamin D. Pretty big population in Seattle as well, which is worse due to cloud cover.

[thewebguyd]

> which is worse due to cloud cover.

Not just cloud cover. Most areas in the PNW, the sun is so low in the sky between October and March that you can't synthesize vitamin D through the skin at all during those months, even on a bright sunny day.

Even during the summer up here, you really only get a window of roughly 10am to 3pm where enough UV-B rays can penetrate the atmosphere, in July. It's estimated that >80% of the PNW population are deficient (compared with 40% nationwide in the US).

[hinkley]

That same podcast I mentioned pointed out that if a white person nude sunbathed in the winter in full sun, you’d get 2nd degree burns long before you made enough vitamin d.

The body stores it though. So how much of a deficit you’re running for how long matters.

[sedivy94]

Minnesota, not Wisconsin. Same latitude and a fair point.

[hinkley]

I knew it was Minnesota, not sure why I wrote WI.

[mwambua]

It's only criminal if they aren't provided with the education/information they need to live healthy lives (which is possible with the right diet/supplements).

[hinkley]

Dark skinned people do not produce enough vitamin D in northern latitudes because of melanin. If you’re black and in Minnesota you probably need supplementation.

[vintermann]

Minnesota? Minnesota isn't particularly dark. Minneapolis is apparently on the same latitude as Venice, Italy, and I don't think of Venice as particularly dark or gloomy (to be fair, they probably have better weather).

But yeah. Low vitamin D levels are common even with lily white people in Northern Europe, and at least here in Norway everyone with dark skin knows that they need vitamin D supplements. Traditionally, public health recommendation (for everyone) was to take cod liver oil regularly for every month with an R in it.

[hinkley]

To your eyes. But the sun angle chews up the wavelengths that make vitamin D.

[mwambua]

I’m painfully aware of that being dark skinned myself. That doesn’t mean that Minnesota is inhospitable though (or that it would be criminal to send me there). It just means that they’d need to know that they need vitamin D supplements and perhaps regular blood screens. Idk if that happens though.

[lisbbb]

They have all already disappeared form public and it's only in the 40s right now. By winter you would swear no Somalis live in MN.

[hinkley]

There are towns in Canada that have heated hallways that go between buildings so you can’t get completely snowed in during the winter. Maybe they should build those. Or the underground walkways they have in a couple of the cities.

[lisbbb]

It was never about doing right for people, it was about making unbelievable gobs of money using them as pawns.

[hinkley]

I mean I guess they could have dumped them in West Virginia or Kentucky and that would have been much much worse.

[anvuong]

I'm an Asian who was born and raised in a tropical weather region of my country. I'm now living in the PNW region of the US and it's always miserable from November-April. Vitamin D helps but it's not the same.

[hinkley]

Seattle taught me a lot about procrastination. If you look outside and it’s sunny, and you promised yourself you’d go out today, drop whatever you’re doing and put on a jacket. Because by the time you finish it might be cloudy again. Seize the hour. There are no days to seize.