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Covid-19 and Vitamin D

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capslock

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I read his work years ago. My takeaways from his work and some supplementary reading were:
- Data are observational but pretty convincing, sufficiency lower all kinds of diseases. Striking was the much lower prevalence of all kinds of cancers in the sun belt.
- Dosage should be in the several 1000 IU range / day, no need to be concerned about toxicity in that range.
- Should be dosed often rather than megadoses once a fortnight because its metabolism is complex. So while the stored form is good for bone health, the effects against cancer and infections may rest on the early metabolites.
- Don't forget about Vitamin K2 when taking high doses.
- No chance to make Vit D from sun from October to March even at noon at Boston latitude (which is more like Rome for us Europeans)
- Best time is around noon because of better UV B to UV A ratio.
- This really turned my previous indoctrination on its head. Melanoma seems to be caused mainly by UV A, so all those sun screens that used to filter only UV-B well into the 90s got it wrong, and even today, UV-A filtering is usually lower than UV-B filtering.
- Holick also cites data from ~1900 California that office workers had much higher rates of melanoma than farm hands and construction workers. Probable reason: window glass filters UV B but only some UV A.


Edit: this is the paper on sunlight that contains much of the information I summarized above and is very much readable:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897598/
 
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capslock

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Word of caution, though: Spain and Isreal had pretty devastating second waves in late summer and early fall when people should have had full stores of Vit D from summer so no panacea.

Second wave in Spain had much lower mortality than first wave (when stores were depleted after winter). Total mortality (including nasty first wave) is at 2% compared to about 3% for central European countries. Israel is more like 0.7%.

See a correlation with opportunity for UV B exposure?
 
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JohnYang1997

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I was going to post this yesterday but hesitant.

High dosage of anything is not good. For treatment, of course you wouldn't know unless you actually go through the process duh. Media is just a shit show. Pretty much no good information.
Now how many people will think high dosing vitamin d will prevent them from catching covid 19 after seeing this. I think it must not be small amount of people. And then they will get it anyway because they can't remotely logically process information.
I don't want to say this but the country I live in have the best control on covid 19 in the world. Even better if you consider the total population and density of population. If we can do this we don't need no vitamin D just get your daily recommended intake maybe double those that are safer that that's it.
 

capslock

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Well, how many times have the rest of us cringed when someone claimed that the US had the world's best / first / whatever. I'll grant you that China's success has been impressive, though, even if made possible by means not accepted elsewhere. Coming to think of that, some other Asian countries achieved similar results while being less intrusive.

Taking Vit D and then acting carelessly in the current pandemic. Taking doses beyond the 400 IU mandated against rickets but getting close to 10,000 IUs / day over an extended period seems perfectly safe and is probably a good idea regardless of Covid, especially if taken with a little Vit K2. Adjust your intake based on sun exposure, food, age, skin color, weight.

Masterjohn, being the diligent Dr. of nutrition science he is, has a good presentation trying to fathom what is surely safe and what might no longer be.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17145139/

However, he's turned around on Vit D and treatment for already acquired Covid:
https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/covi...tamin-d-nearly-abolishes-icu-risk-in-covid-19
 
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Wombat

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It amazes me how confident amateur self-medicators are given the general lack of firm pharmaceutical evidence re their claims and their limited sample experience. Homeopaths aren't any better but there will be adherents on this forum.

When studies show indisputable evidence for a vitamin/mineral supplement being a profound medical intervention it will be up in bright lights in reputed medical practise guides, as are a few already. Until then ................... .
 
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capslock

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Well, first of all, homeopaths treat with nothing.

There are also newer recommendations by professional bodies that go beyond the old nutrition minimum requirements that were designed only to prevent rickets. I don't think anyone recommends going beyond these new recommendations without feedback in the form of serum levels and professional support. But the point is, the threshold for harmful effects of Vit D is very high.
 

Wombat

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Well, first of all, homeopaths treat with nothing.

There are also newer recommendations by professional bodies that go beyond the old nutrition minimum requirements that were designed only to prevent rickets. I don't think anyone recommends going beyond these new recommendations without feedback in the form of serum levels and professional support. But the point is, the threshold for harmful effects of Vit D is very high.


There are recommendations in this thread that are not verified and approved for mainstream general or specialist medical practice. There is a one self-described MD, here, making public personal opinions on the matter beyond generally accepted medical procedures, which to me is concerning. We can't even check his credentials.
 
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chris719

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Vitamin D is fat soluble and so anyone taking more than a couple thousand IU per day must get their plasma Vitamin D checked. I need to take 5000 IU a day to be at a good level, but I know this from multiple blood draws.

I am skeptical about Vitamin D here. While being deficient is not good, simply supplementing it may not do it alone. Correlation is not causation. These individuals who are deficient may have an underlying condition that both causes their deficiency and puts them at higher risk of a severe course of COVID-19. I can't help but think it sounds a bit like the studies claiming Diet Coke will kill you, without examining who is drinking Diet Coke and why.
 
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Correlation is not causation.
Those treatment studies are pretty convincing to be. It's not just observation, they went ahead and administered vitamin D and people got better sooner.
 

chris719

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Those treatment studies are pretty convincing to be. It's not just observation, they went ahead and administered vitamin D and people got better sooner.

Hmm, I may have missed those then. I'll check them out. I thought they were all retrospective and not a randomized controlled trial.
 

Wombat

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Those treatment studies are pretty convincing to be. It's not just observation, they went ahead and administered vitamin D and people got better sooner.

But it is not up to you to give general approval, is it?
 

capslock

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There are recommendations in this thread that are not verified and approved for mainstream general or specialist medical practice. There is a one self-described MD, here, making public personal opinions on the matter beyond generally accepted medical procedures, which to me is concerning. We can't even check his credentials.


There are pretty good studies as to what a single 0.5 or 0.75 erythemal dose sun exposure corresponds to in terms of oral IUs of Vit D. Surely you won't argue that those living at latitudes where they can get this kind of exposure year round are overdosing unless they are Israeli lifeguards overdoing the sun and not drinking enough water. Thailand is at that kind of latitude, and they are doing very well without having too many restrictions, but that is purely anecdotal.

The evidence for Vit D sufficiency preventing infection is observational and not very strong. The evidence for the curative effect of sufficency or bolus doses, on the other hand, looks pretty convincing. Once someone is in hospital for Covid, I doubt we are talking about self-medication, though.
 
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I was going to post this yesterday but hesitant.

High dosage of anything is not good. For treatment, of course you wouldn't know unless you actually go through the process duh. Media is just a shit show. Pretty much no good information.
Now how many people will think high dosing vitamin d will prevent them from catching covid 19 after seeing this. I think it must not be small amount of people. And then they will get it anyway because they can't remotely logically process information.
I don't want to say this but the country I live in have the best control on covid 19 in the world. Even better if you consider the total population and density of population. If we can do this we don't need no vitamin D just get your daily recommended intake maybe double those that are safer that that's it.
The term "high dose" depends on what the reference is. One can call some thousands of IU "recommended dose" and say the reverse, the current 400 IU is "deficient dose", as has been apparent.

I agree people must take precautions still. Having a better immune system will still catch Covid and transmit.
 
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But it is not up to you to give general approval, is it?
No, I am just repeating what I read by better people than me. It is up to the governments to fund proper larger research in this emergency, and medical councils to approve it for general use. But we are not seeing this happening after 1 year, which is the point of this thread. I consider myself just yet another whistle blower. :D
 
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Matias

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There are pretty good studies as to what a single 0.5 or 0.75 erythemal dose sun exposure corresponds to in terms of oral IUs of Vit D. Surely you won't argue that those living at latitudes where they can get this kind of exposure year round are overdosing unless they are Israeli lifeguards overdoing the sun and not drinking enough water. Thailand is at that kind of latitude, and they are doing very well without having too many restrictions, but that is purely anecdotal.

The evidence for Vit D sufficiency preventing infection is observational and not very strong. The evidence for the curative effect of sufficency or bolus doses, on the other hand, looks pretty convincing. Once someone is in hospital for Covid, I doubt we are talking about self-medication, though.
Sun exposure unfortunately is not done enough. Here in Brazil we are in the middle of summer and beaches are open, still we have more than a thousand dying everyday...

I read somewhere (I can search if someone wants) that 20,000 ui is created by a white person with the majority of the body exposed to the noon sun for some 20 minutes. Sure, some people do it every now and then in the summer. And is not toxic, or else after the beach everyone would be in the hospitals. But not everyone does this regularly, and specially in the winter.
 

Wombat

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There are pretty good studies as to what a single 0.5 or 0.75 erythemal dose sun exposure corresponds to in terms of oral IUs of Vit D. Surely you won't argue that those living at latitudes where they can get this kind of exposure year round are overdosing unless they are Israeli lifeguards overdoing the sun and not drinking enough water.

The evidence for Vit D sufficiency preventing infection is observational and not very strong. The evidence for the curative effect of sufficency or bolus doses, on the other hand, looks pretty convincing. Once someone is in hospital for Covid, I doubt we are talking about self-medication, though.

Where research has been accepted into practice there is credible supporting information. There is lots of research stuff floating around that has not been taken into mainstream practice. I don't take non-medical forum opinions promoting/making unqualified research assessments seriously. Medical forums can be full of it too.
 

Wombat

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No, I am just repeating what I read by better people than me. It is up to the governments to fund proper larger research in this emergency, and medical councils to approve it for general use. But we are not seeing this happening after 1 year, which is the point of this thread. I consider myself just yet another whistle blower. :D

Sounds like what believers in many spheres would say. You ultimately 'pass the buck' to others.

Whistle Dixie, maybe but Whistle-blowing?
 

capslock

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Well, Vit D supplementation on the order of 1000 - 10,000 IU / day and testing has become mainstream practice in the US, maybe too much, as the linked medscape article shows. I can also assure you it is mainstream practice in many European countries. I can see it from the advice and treatment my elderly parents receive in Germany.

That being said, many mainstream medical practices were proven wrong over time, many today may well be wrong. To paraphrase Dr. Kendrick, mainstream medicine is very adapt at grabbing the wrong end of the stick, and medical dogma changes one funeral at a time.
 

Wombat

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Well, Vit D supplementation on the order of 1000 - 10,000 IU / day and testing has become mainstream practice in the US, maybe too much, as the linked medscape article shows. I can also assure you it is mainstream practice in many European countries. I can see it from the advice and treatment my elderly parents receive in Germany.

That being said, many mainstream medical practices were proven wrong over time, many today may well be wrong. To paraphrase Dr. Kendrick, mainstream medicine is very adapt at grabbing the wrong end of the stick, and medical dogma changes one funeral at a time.


Pathology labs are not too fussy about what they test for as long as they are paid.

Here is what I would expect from an an Australian medical practitioner: https://www.nps.org.au/australian-prescriber/articles/vitamin-d-deficiency-in-adults-1

Do I know better? Well, if I do a medically unsubstantiated opinion ain't going anywhere.
 

Wombat

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Geez, senior moment. I forgot that Covid19 threads were verboten on this forum and a couple have snuck in. And the Von Lockdown family, too.
 
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