Interesting thing... Vitamin D is one of those things that, when vitamins come up on HN, you will often hear the refrain that "it's the one vitamin that large numbers of people are actually deficient in and ought to supplement."
I've heard that many times over the years and I have taken a Vitamin D supplement on and off (more off than on) over the years.
When this COVID-19 thing first hit, I had a physical scheduled (by chance) just about the same time, and I'd heard about this Vitamin D / COVID-19 connection, so when I went in for my physical, I asked my doctor to order a Vitamin D test as part of my bloodwork.
As it turns out, I was indeed very deficient in Vitamin D. I started taking 4000 IU a day and it's had a noticeable impact on my overall sense of wellbeing. It could, of course, be placebo effect even so. And I have no particular reason to think that it will make any difference one way or the other in terms of me getting COVID-19. But I thought it was worth pointing out one more anecdote that suggests that the old "Vitamin D is worth supplementing" refrain might just be true.
If you're in doubt, and it's an option, do what I did... just ask your doctor to run a Vitamin D test next time you go in for a checkup / physical.
A psychiatrist I saw multiple years ago told me to start taking Vitamin D. I went more or less blindly with 5,000 IU after reading some internet articles.
I got my blood checked last year and decided I should probably actually know if I'm doing too much or too little. I was within 5% of the middle of the healthy range for vitamin D levels. For reference, 5,000 IU is >800% the FDA daily recommended value. People with indoor jobs and hobbies are probably not getting enough.
> For reference, 5,000 IU is >800% the FDA daily recommended value.
Unfortunately the daily recommended value was established erroneously and should be much higher. Many research papers mention this. For example:
> The Institute of Medicine recommendation for adults younger than 70 years of age is 600 IU of vitamin D daily. We are told that this would achieve a level of 50 nmol/L in greater than 97.5% of individuals.6 Regrettably, a statistical error has resulted in erroneous recommendations by the Institute of Medicine leading to this conclusion and it might actually take 8800 IU of vitamin D to achieve this level in 97.5% of the population.7 This is a serious public health blunder.
> A colleague of mine and I have introduced vitamin D at doses that have achieved greater than 100 nmol/L in most of our patients for the past number of years, and we now see very few patients in our clinics with the flu or influenzalike illness. In those patients who do have influenza, we have treated them with the vitamin D hammer, as coined by my colleague. This is a 1-time 50 000 IU dose of vitamin D3 or 10 000 IU 3 times daily for 2 to 3 days. The results are dramatic, with complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours. One-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely and have never been shown to be toxic.8 We urgently need a study of this intervention. The cost of vitamin D is about a penny for 1000 IU, so this treatment costs less than a dollar.
Wow. Why isn't this more prominent on the covid radar?
A lot of us actually know of the connection from previous experiences with the Flu. What it seems to really do is to clear out the cough that comes after the Flu when the cough/sorethroat tends to enter your lungs. With VitaminD, that phase of the flu is gone. I dont supplement regularly, and I start taking it the day I feel I am going down with the flu. No point recommending it because you will be seen as someone who constantly talks of the benefits of VitaminD.
The other thing to make sure of while taking Vitamin D is to take adequate Vitamin K2(menaquinone), else you land up with kidney stones. For continued benefits, I also take some amount of sodium borate and magnesium. Anyway, this is my irregular regimen and you will need to talk to your doc before you do this.
Get tested, meet a doc, get the right dose, and understand how it works.
Previous thinking was that it was more time spent indoors woth central heating recirculating air and things like that but i never really bought into that idea. Doesnt really work for more temperate climates that still see lots of outdoors activity in winter, eg. Australia.
The one difference is during winter, your basically go to work in the dark and arrive home in the dark as well.
Unlike software developers, doctors, in my experience(friends and docs I have gone to), don't seem to have the same open mind about things in their field. At least the one's I know. It might seem foreign to us because a lot of our job is to keep an open mind and constantly question the status quo. Doctors tend to dismiss things immediately and unless you push you won't even get them try something that is harmless. I started going to a primary care physician a decade ago that actually listened, didn't rush me and kept an open mind. He was much younger though. Safe to say though I still go to him. Other doctors young and old that I've been to have not been the same.
That is interesting. As a generality I’ve found software developers to be some of the least open minded people. Perhaps a small bit amongst themselves (though the endless disagreements indicate it’s a very small bit), but when interacting with anyone outside the industry regarding some aspect of the industry, open mindedness is essentially non-existent. Perhaps it is the same for doctors interacting with patients.
An interesting thought experiment is would a video showcasing this paper risk being be banned on YouTube? I'm not going to bother checking if the WHO has a Vitamin D recommendation; but recommending many multiples of the FDA dose probably counts as misinformation.
I think a more likely reason for a ban would simply be that the Vitamin D connection was being highlighted by lockdown skeptics for quite some time already, as part of investigating the Swedish outcomes. The problem is that to highly liberal Google employees it might look 'racist' because the Vit-D connection came out of trying to figure out why Swedish migrants were over-represented in ICU cases, also African-Americans.
For instance, in this comment from six days ago I write about a possible vitamin D connection:
YouTube's response is now to simply remove videos containing misinformation while previous policies have seen most related content demonetized. Examples provided by the executive include videos claiming that people can be cured by taking vitamin C or turmeric. Neither has been proven to act as a cure according to the wider health community.
Another example of prominent videos that are being removed, she continues, are those related to 5G as an underlying cause. The policy changes, like the rise of those conspiracy theories, have had to be rapid. As a result, for the time being, Videos that contain claims in direct opposition to information provided by WHO will be removed as well.
YouTube hopes that by removing conspiracy theories and misinformation, it can help keep users better informed.
----
While it may squash some of the stupider and more dangerous ideas floating around right now, it tosses the baby out with the bathwater and harms important discussion about whether those in charge right now do actually have their information right.
"While it may squash some of the stupider and more dangerous ideas floating around right now, it tosses the baby out with the bathwater and harms important discussion about whether those in charge right now do actually have their information right. "
If you watch the videos by Dr John Campbell (British public health expert), he talks about Vitamin D all the time. He also expresses his frustration that this isn't given more attention.
This is actually very true. There are lots of potential treatments that use generic and non-patentable agents, and very few people are willing to look into it. Zinc is the classic example; some people think it maybe reduces the duration of the common cold. The common cold is one of the main causes of missed workdays. If there's a drug that could make you miss 4 days of work a year instead of 5 days of work a year, it would be worth billions. But nobody is funding studies on zinc, because nobody will be able to capture that saved revenue for themselves. (Zicam did try this; by patenting a nasal administration method and then doing controlled studies with that. If the results were good, then they'd say "it doesn't apply to oral zinc, it only applies to our applicator", and they could have their money. As it turned out, it caused people to permanently lose their sense of smell. I think it helped with their colds, though.)
One problem with zinc is that dosing isn't standardized and people use it in stupid ways, cf. nasal sprays. High concentrations of heavy (-er than calcium) metal ions are of course neurotoxic; putting high concentrations of zinc in direct contact with olfactory tissue is to be avoided. Many supplements contain 50 mg of zinc or more, and worse, people take multiple pills. However, studies show similar effects using only 12.5 mg of zinc:
Studies using much higher amounts of zinc do not show larger effects than this. The duration reduction in the above study was 28% while studies using 200 mg found a reduction of 35%:
Simply put, it does not make sense to multiply the dose by a factor of sixteen in order to improve effectiveness by 20%.
Yet I don't know exactly what GP is talking about. There are loads of studies about zinc for the common cold and there are loads of pills on store shelves containing zinc and claiming to treat the common cold. At least here in the United States, that is. People don't take it because of the side effects and the stupid dose forms available (although the situation seems to be slowly improving).
Interesting. The Zinc supplement that I started taking a couple times of week due to COVID-19 exceeds all upper limits listed on Wikipedia when taken at the recommended daily dose (50 mg).
Please be carefull with trace element as supplements, only take it if your doctor agree and don't self-medicate. When i was younger a kid in my school almost killed himself with iron poisoning (well, rather his parents almost killed him).
"Be careful" as "know which number is bigger than the other"
You're right, people should know that 50mg is bigger than 40mg/25mg (at least for a safe prolonged daily limit - single dosage limit might be higher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_toxicity ). It's kindergarden level math and still it seems people have trouble with it.
I'm not being ironic, it seems that's a common problem. Maybe explains why the situation got to the point it got.
I don't know about that. From where I'm sitting, lots of companies stand to gain if Vitamin D turns out to make a big difference. For example: American Airlines, Hilton, and McDonald's.
Presumably because they would have customers who weren't quarantined at home unable to purchase goods and services -- any cure is a profitable one for companies not specifically invested in healthcare as a service.
could well be true, same can be said of sleep, the few good papers I've read often showed benefits and I don't recall any instances of harm so safe to try, but no money to pay for anything like the volume of research some rare illnesses get.
> "I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there's any way that you can apply light and heat to cure, you know, if you could. And maybe you can, maybe you can't."
He was talking about 2 things
* UV light kills viruses, so why don't you shine UV light into the body to treat the virus
* Many viruses such as the flu don't transmit as well during the summer due to the weather conditions (heat + humidity), so could heat treat the virus in-vivo
Both of those suggestions are ignorant. He very clearly did not mean that getting some sunlight -> Vitamin D will help Coronavirus.
FYI, there is an actual company working on a medical device to put UV light inside the body to light the lungs. It's unproven but in the works. It was subsequently censored by Youtube and Twitter after the President's comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgiHfD_xtvw
My mom did her PhD in micronutrients (sorry, I never really asked for details) and has always been nagging me to take 10000 IU of Vitamin D a day. I have been remiss in this over the years, and my physicals always come back with a note about being Vitamin D deficient. I have gotten better and my bloodwork comes back normal these days. (I have never noticed an effect. Coffee has a large effect on whether or not I feel awake, and getting exercise has a large effect on whether or not I feel good. But I'm sure not being deficient in Vitamin D is helping something.)
To be fair: It isn't just folks with indoor jobs and hobbies.
I've discussed this with my doctor after being severely low on vitamin D. It caused physical pain. I'm far enough north that it is impossible to get the sunlight needed during the winter. I still have days, but they are short without strong sun - not to mention that it is too cold to go without a jacket. So, supplements at least during the winter.
During the summer, I have the option of getting at least 15 minutes of sunlight a day (May through August). Being outside isn't enough: I need to make sure that more than just my face is exposed.
But then, on top of it all, I wound up taking a medicine that not only makes me sensitive to sun, but a bit more prone to a milder form of skin cancer. Sunscreen doesn't help with vitamin D production.
The end result is that I wind up taking vitamin D all year and simply get my levels checked from time to time. Luckily, the over-the-counter stuff does the trick (there isn't the variety in vitamins here as there is in the US).
My doctor told me (as he was telling me I needed to take vitamin D) that really at most latitudes in the US (including SF), the sun light is too weak and you won’t get enough vitamin D from sun exposure. This was all to tell me that I should still take an oral vitamin regardless of how much time I was able to spend outside.
Sunlight exposure is also bad for you; taking it orally is the way to go for most people.
As pointed out upthread, most supplements are hilariously low-dose. I take 20k IU, 3 times per week. (most supplements are like 1000IU per pill, but 3000IU pills can be found)
Damaging high doses can be as little as a few minutes in the Australian summer so I think it's fair to keep that in mind.
On your evolution comment, most Australians don't have dark skin, but the ones who were here before Europeans do. I think that is a good indicator that the body is adjusting to something harmful. On the other hand, many dark skinned people in Britain aren't in a climate they evolved for either. We all have to be mindful that people move around the world faster than evolution now and may need to adjust our habits.
Adding some information for those interested in more precise numbers.
This paper [1] has the recommended exposure time for a few cities in Australia. If you live in the same latitude, as long you live in the same latitude, this can be used as a guideline.
I haven't kept up with the Ozone Hole lately, but I believe it's not uniformly distributed so keep that in mind too if it's still a problem. I'm pretty sure it was usually more of a problem in Australia than South America for example.
I couldn't believe it the first time I went to Singapore, in 35C heat all day in the sun at a theme park, and didn't even get a minor blush on my pale skin due to the humidity and latitude. Definitely eye opening coming from NSW, Australia.
From the table there, for example, in Townsville in summer, with 11% of your body exposed, it takes just 6 minutes to synthesis 1000 IU of vitamin D.
A fair-skinned female friend who studied at James Cook University used to complain she got sunburnt walking between classes... So DWG, if you read this, apologies for telling you off for exaggerating!
I certainly do not recommend taking sunlight orally (lol etc)
Over exposure to sunshine is a bad idea. Depending on latitude, time of year, skin colour and a few other very well understood factors determines what is a safe exposure to the sun. We all know this already. Getting outside generally involves fresh, moving air. There is also the risk of gentle, through moderate to vigorous exercise.
Wear a hat and sunscreen if required but a good thing you can do to fight this nasty (all other things being equal) is take moderate exercise outside daily. Don't overdo it and keep away from other people.
I think a lot of other replies are missing the nuance.
It depends on a lot of things. Time of year, time of day, skin colour, where you live, if you're under an Ozone hole, UV index, personal sensitivity/medications, etc.
This is a good summary[0] for the situation in Australia, possibly the worst in the world when it comes to the sun being deadly. Their strongest statement about avoiding sun:
"During summer in Australia, all states experience long periods during the day when the UV Index is 3 or above (see Table 1). During these periods, a combination of sun protection measures (broad brimmed hat, covering clothing, sunscreen, sunglasses and shade) is recommended when outdoors for more than a few minutes. In summer, most Australian adults will maintain adequate vitamin D levels from sun exposure during typical day to day outdoor activities."
So a few minutes in the sun without protection is enough to raise your cancer risk during the worse times on the worst days and you shouldn't be seeking any sun intentionally for vitamin D during these times. Growing up it was easy to get sunburned in 10-15 minutes on some days, and the advice was that if you burn you definitely raised your cancer risk.
Isn’t some sunlight exposure good in general? I think it’s going too far to declare sunlight as genealogy dangerous. It definitely helps me with my mood.
my understanding standing is that the older you get the less that your body can metabolize from sunlight and it’s sunlight that occurs for a small period of time during the day based on the angle of the sun and the type of UV rays that are filtered. and you need to be naked
I've read a few paper on this subject you are absolutely correct, I don't know why you are have been downvoted.
Vitamin D is only produced with in UVB wavelength [1]. No vitamin D is produced over 318nm. I wonder if that's the reason they divided the range in UVA, UVB and UVC.
The solar ray incidation angle, pollution and altitude (higher, more UVB) affects the amount of UVB that hits the surface [2].
Therefore, the time of the day you are sunbathing is important to optimize Vitamin D synthesis. Midday is the best time. If you live bellow 25 degree latitude, the UVA/UVB ratio on winter is about the same on summer. Of course, you should take in consideration the weather and the UV index. I'm talking only about the ratio.
This paper [3] has guideline for sun exposure for Australian. It is possible to correlate the data for other places in the same latitude -- taking in consideration the Australian differences in UV index.
> People with indoor jobs and hobbies are probably not getting enough.
I argue that if you go outside and wear the appropriate sun protection—long pants,long sleeves, neck covered, broad rim hat, and wear sunscreen on the exposed parts—you can't get enough sun exposure to produce enough Vitamin D.
Okay now I'm wondering if I should go get tested for vitamin d deficiency. I live in Colorado and therefore we have a lot of ultraviolet light and I do get outside as much as possible. However I'm wondering if that's still not enough.
Seems reasonable that it's not based on your experience.
I live in Colorado, though I definitely don't try to get outside as much as possible. If you have symptoms of deficiency, nothing wrong with asking for testing vitamin d levels when you get a blood test. If you don't have symptoms, nothing to fix.
Vitamin D intake via supplements (vitamin pills) results in vitamin D storage in fat in you body. The storage decays over time, and it appears that intake via supplements decays twice as fast as intake via sun exposure.
Then it’s probably not a vitamin if we can synthesize enough of it to function fine.
The definition of vitamin is that it’s gotta be organic, necessary for healthy functioning, and we must be incapable of synthesizing enough of it to survive, even if it’s also available in our food. This is why cholesterol isn’t a vitamin; it’s necessary for us to live, but we’re fully capable of synthesizing enough of it on our own.
“A vitamin is an organic molecule (or related set of molecules) that is an essential micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism. Essential nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at all or not in sufficient quantities, and therefore must be obtained through the diet.”
By this definition you might argue that it's a vitamin north of some geographic line and a hormone south of that line ....
Also, nicotinamide (one form of Vitamin B3) is a metabolite of niacin (nicotinic acid, another form of Vitamin B3). Humans can produce the former from the latter, but require at least one of them from the diet. Does that make niacin a vitamin, but nicotinamide a hormone? They are not equivalent, but as far as "being essential", they are substitutes.
I believe the capability of humans to synthesize sufficient amounts of D3 under many circumstances makes it a hormone, not whether or not I’m synthesizing it right now. It doesn’t suddenly go from being a hormone to a vitamin once I took up an office job, I just stopped doing the activities required to self-synthesize it.
I think things get very tricky to define when you need at least one compound that can complete some biological process, but there are several different potential compounds that could do the job, some of which have to come from diet and others can by synthesized by the human body.
> I believe the capability of humans to synthesize sufficient amounts of D3 under many circumstances makes it a hormone
Its molecular structure precursor is cholesterol, a steroid hormone which by convention is a molecule with 3 hexanes attached to pentane and an R group, it under goes a series of cleaves in the presence of UV light to yield D3.
D3 and its known analogue's behavioiur and bioactivety also behaves like a steroid/hormone in that it can passively diffuse across a membrane. and helps down-regulate other metabolic reactions. Its effects on reducing inflammation in IG patients is well documented and worth checking out.
Here is a good review on Corticosteroids, specifically on there effects on inflammation treatment.
Well yes, Vitamin D is pretty hard to come around in the northern hemisphere so no surprise there. Mind you, it's far not the only thing - magnesium, zinc, selenium are just a few which most people are missing. I mean unless your diet consists entirely of tuna and salmon probably. Over the last few years, I've stressed significantly on my physical health(after being very overweight for the most of my adult life and now happy to say this is not the case anymore at all). And while Vitamin D has been one of the things I've become very strict about, my supplements menu has significantly expanded. And there are plenty of products which come bundled with your daily intake of vitamins and minerals. And one in particular has become a part of my breakfast at this point. I haven't had as much as a sneeze in the last two years, haven't felt even mild fatigue or exhaustion, even after the toughest of days. But as you said, it's best to consult a doctor first, especially if you have bad medical history. If you are healthy and fit though then there are plenty of good options to go with.
Interestingly enough, a few years ago some scientists hypothesized the lack of selenium in certain parts of China may have contributed to the spread of the SARS 2003 epidemic, since viruses that infect organisms deficient in selenium mutate at much faster rate (although some scientists dispute that).
Or move to a country with selenium-rich soil. Iirc Finland started mandating selenium to be added to fertiliser in the 80s and suddenly people started getting better selenium levels.
I talked to a Finnish nutritionist a while ago and she said it was about as much a success for public health as when they started adding iodine to salt. We didn't talk about the situation today, so it might have changed. I just found it interesting.
Oh my. As per usual Gwern, an amazingly detailed and long post about magnesium. I skimmed it in about a minute and just got a sense that I would need an entire afternoon just to properly read it. I don't know how he does it, frankly. But I'm thankful.
I go for a bundle of these[1] every 2 or 3 days, depending on how often I train and in the days between D-3 (1000 IU), vitamin C+zinc (1000mg for C), magnesium citrate 200mg.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I do train a lot and I'm in the 6-8% body fat range so generally I have higher needs. The ones in the link are bundled up in small bags of 11 pills and the values are for 2 packs of 11 which is a complete overkill if you are not a top tier athlete. 1 pack of 11 every 2 or 3 days is sufficient for regular people.
I also had a vitamin D deficiency that was found after a particularly bad string of colds, my Dr told me to take a supplement(5000ius daily) of vitamin D and have not seen anything like it since. Apparently windows cars/office block sunlight's ability to create vitamin D in a person so a car ride or sitting near an office window does not provide any help. And if you are in a office job you are def. not getting enough vitamin D.
> if you are in a office job you are def. not getting enough vitamin D.
I think this really depends on location and lifestyle. Anyone in a Mediterranean or sunnier climate that spends more than 30mn a day outside will be fine
I spend lots of time outside and I live in California. I still had life-long vit D deficiency, probably since birth. No idea why, might be something genetic.
The only way I could figure it out was via blood tests, spaced a few years apart. First time the doctor said "hm, you're pretty low on vit D, you should supplement it". Second time, it was more like "you're really low and you should take XXX amount each day, NOW!"
Big changes in terms of mood and "energy". I'm now kicking myself for not taking it earlier.
Vitamin D is not absorbed instantly when exposed to the sun. Soap and hot showers removes what is left so levels are also affected by personal hygiene habits.
Does anyone know of a rule of thumb for how much time spent in direct sunlight is equivalent to a Vitamin D supplement? Is an hour per day (on average) sufficient?
It depends on your skin color [0]. For people with light skin, 13 minutes of direct midday sunlight three times a week may be enough. But for people with dark skin, you may need 30 minutes to 3 hours of direct sunlight (the article doesn't make it clear whether that is three times a week or once a day) to get enough vitamin D.
the sun must be above 50' above horizon for UVB to penetrate the atmosphere to reach the skin. When your skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol
I read Michael Holick's book (can't find it at the moment) he was the guy who discovered the circulating form of vitamin D.. IIRC you get vitamin D from the sun in rather large quantities. Just 15 minutes per day with only your face and hands exposed with the sun up at 45 degrees or more will be enough. I'm sure my data is not accurate, but it's in the ballpark. He has tables that depend on how dark your skin is and what latitude you live at.
So, this is only partly true. You need direct sunlight AND the amount varies wildly depending on your skin color. If you're rather pale, it may be only 15 min. But it can go up to several hours if you're dark-skinned.
What if it's cloudy? We are lucky to get 3 days a week where the midday sun isn't covered by cloud. Is it still sufficient filtering through the atmosphere?
UV rays penetrate clouds, but the clouds do filter some of it, so you'll likely need to increase the amount of time you spend outside depending on how cloudy it is.
My doctor's advice: 15-30 minutes of sun per day, with more than just your face exposed. So yes, an hour a day might be sufficient. You don't need to sunbathe, luckily, and cloudy days count too.
For me, this only counts from May to August: I'm pretty far north, and there isn't proper sun strength much of the year.
The Solar Zenith Angle is the most important. This is what changes from winter to summer and morning to night.
Vitamin D production is only made on the UVB range that is highest at midday. Both UVA and UVB causes erythema. Counterintuitively to common sense, it is better to sun bath midday than early in the morning.
If you sunbath at 8 you might need twice as many time to produce the same amount of vitamin D and you be exposed to much more UVA, thus more like to get burn.
"During active COVID-19 infection symptoms (fever, cough), please AVOID these common supplements: Echinacea, Elderberry, Polysaccharide extracts from Medicinal Mushrooms and Vitamin D as these MAY theoretically exacerbate the cytokine inflammatory storm. It's OK to take them preventively (if you are already doing so) but please stop at the first sign of COVID-19 symptoms."
Hence I've been avoiding adding Vitamin D to my daily ritual; anyone have any supporting data?
> "During active COVID-19 infection symptoms [...], please AVOID[...]"
> Hence I've been avoiding adding Vitamin D
Do you have active symptoms?
The concern is about a studied connection between Vitamin D supplementation and an increase in concentration of the IL-1b inflammation marker (see, e.g., [1]), which has been implicated in cytokine storms. The other supplements mentioned have similar effects.
This correlation suggests that you might not want to be taking Vitamin D if you're as risk of a cytokine storm hurting you.
That said, however, vitamin D is also associated with strong anti-inflammatory properties of other markers, so really -- it's super hard to predict what will happen. As far as I know, no one has observed a connection between Vitamin D and cytokine storms directly, so the whole thing is kind of hypothetical.
Hmm, I consider that paper to be pretty weak evidence -- as elsewhere, it shows a hypothesized connection via some intermediaries: they show Vitamin D inhibits inflammatory cytokines, but then presume that this inhibition must therefore help avoid hypercytokinaemia (cytokine storms), despite hypercytokinaemia being an edge case/failure mode of the immune system that is not particularly well-understood.
The paper I shared in my previous post cites work showing that Vitamin D promotes other kinds of inflammatory cytokines.
So, yeah. Vitamin D might reduce the likelihood of a cytokine storm, and circumstantial evidence relying on mechanism-of-action suggests that it does -- but this hasn't been demonstrated conclusively.
What is known, however, and which this paper reiterates, is that if you're deficient in Vitamin D, you're more likely to suffer from respiratory tract infections. Take a supplement!
The paper you cited only deal with cell lines (i.e. in-vitro studies), whereas you can find good quality in-vivo RCT studies about both low grade inflammation and cytokines storm. Hell, you can event find meta-analysis for specific conditions and related inflammatory state (CHF, type 2 diabete, ...)
Hell, we even have preliminary human studies dealing with just that: clinical outcome for patients admitted in intensive care unit, with or without a single mega-dose of vitamin D: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939707/
> Hell, we even have preliminary human studies dealing with just that: clinical outcome for patients admitted in intensive care unit, with or without a single mega-dose of vitamin D: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939707/
Thank you, this is what I was looking for! Great outcome.
The other three papers you cite are also all correlations of Vitamin D with inflammatory factors, not with disease outcomes. I must have missed the study that looks specifically at cytokine storms as a dependent variable. Could you point it out to me?
I don't know if I had COVID-19 since I couldn't get a test. I had dry cough for 4 weeks since early May. It didn't go away.
I increased Vitamine D supply by taking a supplement and eating more fish (salmon, herring). The cough became better but became much better only when I also added Echinacea.
I was also tested for Vitamin D deficiency and my doctor prescribed 50,000 ICU a week, followed by a much smaller amount per day afterwards. I noticed an improvement in my well-being as well (could have been psychological). My armchair hypothesis is that modern humans tend to be indoor creatures, yet our bodies evolved as if we were outdoor creatures, therefore we're supposed to be getting more sunlight and Vitamin D than we actually are.
Same thing happened to me. I was in the single digits for Vitamin D, and my doc had me taking 10000 a day (or week) I think. Within a month, I started to feel way more energy in the afternoon (I used to feel dead by 1pm). I also mysteriously kept getting sick with small colds that winter before supplementing, and those also went away.
USDA experiments have shown that exposing certain mushrooms to UV light converts cholesterols in the mushrooms to vitamin D. Since sunlight contains UV, an easy solution would be to leave some portabella mushrooms out in the noonday sun for a while. So far I can't find any articles that give a precise number for how long the mushrooms were exposed, though.
How is it taken in the rest of the world? In Norway, it's traditionally done by drinking cod liver oil daily during the winter months. At least that's what I do.
It doesn't really say that: it just repeats the standard advice that 4000 IU is the safe upper limit. The real answer is to get yourself tested regularly if you supplement large amounts of D3. (I'd advise taking K2 with it too, but do your own research.)
Since you're taking Vitamin D, you might also want to see if you need Zinc. Both Vitamins account for the largest deficits in the population. You might want to consider taking a Magnesium supplement since taking Vitamin D which can lead to a deficiency in Magnesium. Vitamin C is worth taking a few times through out the day.
The Trifecta is D,Zinc and C (with a magnesium supplement a few times a week).
I have read more than one study in the years past that consistent use of vitamin C supplements actually leads to a weaker immune system in the long term.
I went to my doctor complaining about the general lack of energy. Turned out to be Vitamin D. I grew up in the tropics and the lack of sun had put me under a severe deficiency. Had to take prescription strength to get to normal. Since then that’s one supplement I never miss.
I had mine checked because I was curious when I went for bloodwork a couple of years ago. I was expecting it would be low since I work indoors on a computer all day and my exposure to the sun in winter is limited.
I think I was tested in late fall, and it was fairly expensive to have done (roughly $100 where I was in Europe). From what I remember, you're deficient if you're less than 12 ng/mL and mine was around 6 ng/mL.
Of course I want to say I feel better, experience less winter blues, get sick less often, and have more energy since I started taking a supplement. I can't be certain of any of those things though. Maybe it makes a difference, maybe it doesn't. I feel decent these days, the numbers say I should take it, so that's why I take it.
You'd have to get follow up to see if Vitamin D has gone up after taking it.
I was Wrong on the internet (lots of food has vitamin D including Eggs and Mushrooms): Vitamin D supplements may not be absorbed as digestion isn't the normal process for obtaining it.
"Very few foods in nature contain vitamin D. The flesh of fatty fish (such as salmon, tuna, and mackerel) and fish liver oils are among the best sources [1,11]. Small amounts of vitamin D are found in beef liver, cheese, and egg yolks. Vitamin D in these foods is primarily in the form of vitamin D3 and its metabolite 25(OH)D3 [12]. Some mushrooms provide vitamin D2 in variable amounts [13,14]. Mushrooms with enhanced levels of vitamin D2 from being exposed to ultraviolet light under controlled conditions are also available."
Wouldn't a doctor simply test? I know when I was really low, the doctor scheduled me for a blood test after 3 months of prescription-dose vitamin D pills. We've also spot checked since then.
Yeah, when I got back for my next checkup, I definitely plan to ask my doctor to order the Vitamin D test again so we can see how it's changed over time.
For generally fighting off viruses, I wonder if Vitamin D is the reason why many colds / flues tend to peak in the winter months and subside over the summer.
Likely placebo. Vitamin D is extremely soluble in our bodies and takes months of consistent supplement dosage to have an effect on our baseline levels.
I had winter depression for years, and Vitamin D supplementation has all-but completely cured it. If I forget to take it for a few days (in the winter), then I really notice the difference, and taking the supplement (via drops) reliably helps within 2-3 hours of taking them.
I don't see how this could be a placebo as 1. I wasn't really expecting them to work in the first place. 2. I've tried all sorts of things over the years to try and relieve my depression, and nothing else has worked.
It's possible that raising baseline levels isn't actually required to have beneficial effects. Of course, the quantities of vitamin that aren't raising baseline levels must be going somewhere. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that at least some of it is going directly towards production of whatever things the body uses vitamin D for.
The only way to be sure is to randomly take either the real preparation or some placebo that looks, tastes, smells etc. exactly the same so you can’t tell the difference. The placebo effect does not require you to believe in the cure.
To be sure, yeah, but if you've tried a bunch of things with no success, and then one thing works despite your having no real optimism for it, that's pretty suggestive of a non-placebo effect.
I'll have to get checked next time I'm at the doc. I'm pretty far south, so sunlight isn't normally an issue. I also enjoy a glass of milk every night for 'dessert'. It is fortified with some vitamin D, but I'm not sure how much. My bigger concern is probably skin cancer over lack of vitamin D though.
the benefits of sunlight outweigh the risks. Avoid burning, but know that tanning is not correlated with melanoma (assuming you have skin that tans; otherwise, ignore this).
This conflicts with what I've always been taught, and with every high google result for 'tanning skin cancer'. (I'm in Australia, where the sun is especially damaging; but I'd be surprised if tanning were very dangerous here but fine elsewhere, and in any case the search results were not all local.) What are you basing it on?
It gets complicated. Sunburn (occasional high dose of sun) is unequivocally bad, and highly correlated with skin cancer. Regular, moderate exposure (could be described as tanning) is correlated to lower risk of cancer than getting little sun.
An examination of the current state of the scientific research shows that (i) severe sunburns are linked to increased risk of melanoma but non-burning sun exposure is linked to reduced risk of melanoma
What is your usual residence location?
When I was in Australia I had no vitamin D deficiency at any part of my life. I moved to Canada two years ago and suddenly I was severely vitamin D deficient.
And this also means that people with higher melanin residing in northern hemispheres are more at risk.
If this has been suggested for some time it would be kind of odd that only one study has noticed the connection; this seems rather easy to test, right?
I've heard that many times over the years and I have taken a Vitamin D supplement on and off (more off than on) over the years.
When this COVID-19 thing first hit, I had a physical scheduled (by chance) just about the same time, and I'd heard about this Vitamin D / COVID-19 connection, so when I went in for my physical, I asked my doctor to order a Vitamin D test as part of my bloodwork.
As it turns out, I was indeed very deficient in Vitamin D. I started taking 4000 IU a day and it's had a noticeable impact on my overall sense of wellbeing. It could, of course, be placebo effect even so. And I have no particular reason to think that it will make any difference one way or the other in terms of me getting COVID-19. But I thought it was worth pointing out one more anecdote that suggests that the old "Vitamin D is worth supplementing" refrain might just be true.
If you're in doubt, and it's an option, do what I did... just ask your doctor to run a Vitamin D test next time you go in for a checkup / physical.