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Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

medrxiv.org

201–210 of 304 posts

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#201

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…

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).

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#202

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…

Hmm, my doctor specifically said a few weeks ago:

"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?

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [0] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-d-from-sun#skin...

That little? So my four hours of tennis a week in the hot Greek sun is much more than enough, even with sunscreen on.

Playing four hours of tennis under the hot Greek sun may lead to other health issues though.

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#204

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…

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.

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#206
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> tanning is not correlated with melanoma

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?

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#207
post #194

Lots of people have been claiming that the currently-summer countries haven't gotten as hard hit. Their reasoning has been that the extra UV is killing the virus. I wonder if they were correct, but for the wrong reasons. Vitamin D in humans primarily comes from a chemical reaction with sunlight in the skin. Maybe there's an indirect effect there that explains what they were seeing?

Vitamin D could also be a factor in the general, well-established trend of cold and flu being more prevalent in the winter.

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That little? So my four hours of tennis a week in the hot Greek sun is much more than enough, even with sunscreen on.

Playing four hours of tennis under the hot Greek sun may lead to other health issues though.

Such as?

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Re: Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe Covid-19

#210
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

The next paragraph is even more interesting: > 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-…

So... Trump suggesting sunlight as a treatment for COVID-19 may not have been so crazy?

edit: that was a joke, not a very good one I guess.

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