Covid-19 and Vitamin D

[JeffS7444]

Well, it seems that The Lancet has removed the original paper:
https://gizmodo.com/vitamin-d-supplements-dont-seem-to-help-people-sick-wit-1846308538

 

[earlevel]

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-per...t-effective-moderate-severe-covid-study-finds

This is sort of like saying:

Premise: Exercise makes you stronger.

Evidence against: Hospitalized sedentary patients were given an hour of exercise with a top professional trainer. They did not become stronger, nor did their health improve.

Seriously—Everything that vitamin D helps with, is a long-term proposition. There are many poorly substantiated claims for D, but for instance we're pretty sure about the role in helping calcium and phosphorus absorption, and we're pretty certain that rickets is related to vitamin D deficiency. Yet giving a child with rickets, or a person with soft bones, a dose of vitamin D will do nothing. More related to covid, it's widely accepted that D plays an important role in the immune system, and lack of it is associated with autoimmunity. And studies indicate it inhibits respiratory infections.

Frankly, I taken the big doses for several years because it keeps my doctor happy, I've been skeptical whether the some of the findings for it are real. But there is little denying that it's either a freak of remarkable coincidence, or something real, that the very top countries in D sufficiency have gone almost untouched by the disease. Thailand and Vietnam have huge Chinese tourism, not like they are somehow uniquely isolated from the disease. Yet even Japan looks devastated compared with those countries.

 

[xykreinov]

Yes, make more light of this. The sinister portion of the powers that be and big pharma have always tried to cover up the dire importance of Vitamin D, as it would hurt their goal of making people sick in ways which benefit the elites & pharma. They sometimes especially hide the benefits of getting it through certain sources of light instead of supplements, when the sun is not available. Although I do find the absolute veracity of COVID deaths eyebrow-raising, that is still a useful study.

 

[RickSanchez]

Well, it seems that The Lancet has removed the original paper:
https://gizmodo.com/vitamin-d-supplements-dont-seem-to-help-people-sick-wit-1846308538

Highlights from the article:

On Friday, the Lancet removed the paper from its preprint server, citing “concerns about the description of the research in this paper.” It also announced that it would launch an investigation into the study.

Meanwhile, the results of what seems to be a genuine randomized trial on vitamin D for covid-19 were published Wednesday in the Journal of American Medical Association—the largest study of its kind to date. Researchers in Brazil said they randomized 240 people with moderate to severe covid-19 in the hospital to receive a single large dose of vitamin D (200,000 IU, compared to the 600-800 IU daily dose recommended for the average adult) or a placebo.

All told, they found no difference in the length of hospital stay between people who took vitamin D and those who didn’t. There was also no difference in the mortality rate or other important metrics, like the likelihood of someone needing invasive ventilation. And while the treatment did appear safe, one patient did have an episode of vomiting likely tied to it.

“The findings do not support the use of a high dose of vitamin D3 for treatment of moderate to severe COVID-19,” the authors wrote.

 

[Matias]

Highlights from the article:

A single high dose is not as effective as continuous administration, as was written many times before. Do people even read the thread??

 

[MarcT]

I've been taking 4000 IU per day for several years now, and I've rarely been sick. My doctor sometimes checks my Vitamin D level. I can't prove it, but I also believe adequate Vitamin D levels promote a sense of well being.

 

[CtheArgie]

And we merrily continue with medical pseudo science. Carry on. Next, burning incense helps too. It depends who grows the incense and what particular vase you use...

 

[chris719]

I've been taking 4000 IU per day for several years now, and I've rarely been sick. My doctor sometimes checks my Vitamin D level. I can't prove it, but I also believe adequate Vitamin D levels promote a sense of well being.

Well, just as a counterpoint, I never noticed I was deficient. I was really hoping to feel benefits after taking 5000 IU + multivitamin per day, but I felt nothing unfortunately even being near the top of the range.

 

[MarcT]

Well, just as a counterpoint, I never noticed I was deficient. I was really hoping to feel benefits after taking 5000 IU + multivitamin per day, but I felt nothing unfortunately even being near the top of the range.

Yeah, I'm not sure that I was ever feeling poorly due to a low Vitamin D level. It appears that D levels are routinely watched by doctors these days, and mine was a bit low. I had read about the purported benefits of D3 supplementation and my doctor was okay with my taking D3 supplements.

And as a result of CtheArgie's post above, I did a search and found a paper in Circulation Research (American Heart Association) that calls into question the whole concept of Vitamin D supplementation for most people. I seems that 4000 IU/day is considered to be the top end of the acceptable dosage range and that may be too much for some people. Based on this paper, I'm going to be significantly reducing my dosage and may eliminate it altogether in the summer.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10....ctions,30 osteoclastogenesi ... 26 more rows

 

[Wes]

I rub it on my cables.

 

[Emlin]

I rub it on my cables.

Does the D stand for directional?

 

[Rottmannash]

Does the D stand for directional?

No. Dipole

 

[capslock]

I've been taking 10,000 units a day for years, my doctor checks my levels and nags me if it's not high enough. (He's a longevity-oriented doc, one of the things he's a stickler about.) When covid started up, I had a hunch and checked, looking for countries with high D sufficiency, comparing it to outbreaks—Thailand and Vietnam stand out as the highest sufficiency in the world...while coincidentally being almost devoid of impact from the virus. Correlation isn't causation, but I figured it would be interesting looking back in a couple of years.

In the beginning, my local nutrition store got wiped out on C, and zinc was hit pretty hard. I saw mention of NAC somewhere and thought "of course", expected the sstore to be cleaned out, they had tons of it. (I used to take it daily decades ago, had fallen off.) Cheap, no-brainer (take C with it).

A few months ago, I saw a doctor on a tv news program, he said "D, zinc , NAC, C, reduced glutathione". OK, had never taken the last one, added it, what the heck.

As has been said, D3. But if you're taking a calcium supplement, it's probably a good idea to ditch the calcium. If you eat dairy, you'll have plenty anyway. (I say "probably" because like most things, you can find evidence that it's very dangerous in theory, though some studies don't show that to be apparently true, etc. Still, it doesn't seem like a good idea. A minimum, it's unlikely that calcium supplements are going to do you any good anyway, barring a diet lacking it, so it seems you're just risking the bad.)

You have a link for the Vit D sufficieny being highest in Thailand and Vietnam? It would make sense as they have been doing admirably. But where do they get their Vit D? The food is not too different from other South-East-Asian countries. They have plenty of sun, and many Vietnamese and some Thai (e.g. those of Chinese ancentry) are quite light skinned, but if they don't go out into the sun or slather up at the tiniest ray like many Australians do, it'll do them little good. In fact, some Thai I know have professed they don't care for sun or beaches.

We can never be sure how much testing and tracing was going on there, so cases may be underreported, but evidently, severe cases or deaths were rare (Thailand 25,000 cases, 83 deaths, Vietnam 2,400 cases, 35 deaths). From what a former colleague who moved back to Bangkok told me, restrictions were very light and no great testing effort was made.

As for Japan, I would expect good Vit D and general health status because of all that fatty fish, natto and relative lack of sugar. Looking at their numbers, 423,000 cases, 7,363 reported deaths, their case fatality rate of ~1.8% is still lower than most central European countries. And they may have well been undertesting, e.g. to salvage the Olympics. There was a study that found antibodies in close to 50% of ~2,000 commuting employees of a large company in Tokyo that were randomly selected. They most likely communted by rail, and in fact, you can get almost nothing done in Tokyo without using the excellent rail system, so we can probably assume that half of greater Tokyo had been exposed by fall of last year which is nearly 20 million people. In that light, and considering their rather old population, they had a very low real fatality rate compared to Western countries.

The real outlier is Singapore with 60,000 cases and just 29 deaths. You can be sure they tested and traced a lot. Most of their cases were in migrant worker housing, who were presumably young and fit, so that may explain low fatalities. They may also simply use different criteria for ascribing a death to Covid.

 

[Chromatischism]

Regarding low risk, I think it really depends on your current health and any underlying conditions, so if you do take D3 supplements, you should probably talk to your doctor to determine the appropriate amount and monitor with blood tests.

I'm sure there are people out there who will read these studies or some random Facebook tidbit or link, and will start taking large amounts of vitamin D that could potentially solve one problem while causing several others:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-d-side-effects

Maybe that is why we shouldn't blindly advocate that everyone starts loading up on vitamin D, alas, given the current pandemic, I agree there is something to be said about being well aware of your vitamin D levels and taking corrective action as needed.

Every time I take a couple thousand IU's, after a few days I develop the most awful lumbar spin pain/popping/weakness.

I had a lumbar disc replacement 10 years ago and that is what I link it to. The effects occur exactly at the region I had my surgery, which now houses an artificial disc with spiked titanium plates to adhere to the vertebrae above and below. I've had to watch my D intake ever since. I've repeated this several times over the years and every time I stop taking it, my back gets better again. I believe there is a strong interplay between vitamin D, calcium, and bone strength. Years ago some research led me to DNA methylation being involved but I'll probably never know.

 

[Phorize]

So you have not read the papers, dismiss them as probably both inadequately designed and controlled, classify it as "anecdotal" and make a funny comparison?

If more people react like that, I guess this explains how a year has passed with thousands people dying and dozens of studies are still being ignored.

Again, many of the papers are peer reviewed, with control groups and statistically valid. This is not "guessing".

It might as well be if you aren’t well practiced in a health related research specialism snd can’t place the research in context. I couldn’t care less what health science laypeople think is interesting in the data, they don’t have a seat at that table as far as I’m concerned and to collude with their delusional view that they do has real world consequences.

 

[Wes]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5613455/

 

[JeffS7444]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5613455/

My takeaway is "Organic chemistry in the human body is super-complex".

 

[earlevel]

You have a link for the Vit D sufficieny being highest in Thailand and Vietnam? It would make sense as they have been doing admirably. But where do they get their Vit D? The food is not too different from other South-East-Asian countries. They have plenty of sun, and many Vietnamese and some Thai (e.g. those of Chinese ancentry) are quite light skinned, but if they don't go out into the sun or slather up at the tiniest ray like many Australians do, it'll do them little good. In fact, some Thai I know have professed they don't care for sun or beaches.

We can never be sure how much testing and tracing was going on there, so cases may be underreported, but evidently, severe cases or deaths were rare (Thailand 25,000 cases, 83 deaths, Vietnam 2,400 cases, 35 deaths). From what a former colleague who moved back to Bangkok told me, restrictions were very light and no great testing effort was made.

As for Japan, I would expect good Vit D and general health status because of all that fatty fish, natto and relative lack of sugar. Looking at their numbers, 423,000 cases, 7,363 reported deaths, their case fatality rate of ~1.8% is still lower than most central European countries. And they may have well been undertesting, e.g. to salvage the Olympics. There was a study that found antibodies in close to 50% of ~2,000 commuting employees of a large company in Tokyo that were randomly selected. They most likely communted by rail, and in fact, you can get almost nothing done in Tokyo without using the excellent rail system, so we can probably assume that half of greater Tokyo had been exposed by fall of last year which is nearly 20 million people. In that light, and considering their rather old population, they had a very low real fatality rate compared to Western countries.

The real outlier is Singapore with 60,000 cases and just 29 deaths. You can be sure they tested and traced a lot. Most of their cases were in migrant worker housing, who were presumably young and fit, so that may explain low fatalities. They may also simply use different criteria for ascribing a death to Covid.

There is no doubt that it's a complicated issue, and will take years to understand (and much will not be known for certain, and it doesn't help that we will get nothing out of China and the Wuhan lab). I am in no way implying that D is the key. If anything, perhaps it help the immune system from going bonkers, which is they way people actually die from it, but it certainly, at best, one of many factors.

Japan is also a bundle of uncertainty. People credit masks, but other hand-hit places have been much more adamant about masks. Some claims of antibodies, as if a similar virus has already been seen (to be clear, I have doubts about it on a large scale, I'm not suggesting it myself, jsut saying it's yet another possibility). And while Japanese are generally healthy and have low obesity, they are at the high end of hypertension for developed countries—and that seems to be a big risk factor.

Anyway, here's D sufficiency in a chart—you'll have to dig deeper for more detail, but it's what I found in a chart, from this pub:

INTERACTIVE MAPS ON VITAMIN D LEVEL WORLDWIDE

Interesting that Sweden is in there (green). Har-hit, but similar to US without the shutdown. Like I said, doubtful it's one thing:

 

[Matias]

It might as well be if you aren’t well practiced in a health related research specialism snd can’t place the research in context. I couldn’t care less what health science laypeople think is interesting in the data, they don’t have a seat at that table as far as I’m concerned and to collude with their delusional view that they do has real world consequences.

https://c19study.com/d

400+ delusional medical scientist...

 

[BDWoody]

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