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Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

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Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#61

Post by secabeen »

James_Henry wrote: post #36
newsbinator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't figure out the safe + effective dosage of Vitamin D. I was taking 1,000mg a day and that didn't seem to move the needle on my Vitamin D blood work. In recent weeks I've been taking 4,000mg/day (with K2), which is 4x what I've had pharmacists recommend. I plan to keep that up for a couple more weeks while I'm under quarantine (recently flew from a high-risk country to a less high-risk country). After tha…

The safest way is to take an occasional test for your vitamin d levels. There are tests that you can take at home that aren't too expensive!

Yep. I work inside a lot, so I started taking 5000IU of D a day. After two weeks, I had my levels tested and it showed a level of 37. When fall comes around, and I'm outside even less, I'll probably up the dosage for a week or two, then test again. Target is between 50 and 70, so I definitely need more.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#62

Post by graeme »

throwanem wrote: post #50
ve55 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen that one, that looks pretty impressive, especially for administering it in a single dose that is that large. That's definitely a good data point in favor that some of it is direct causation though.

31 total subjects, only 13 vitamin D deficient initially, p = 0.03. This study at best suggests further, more rigorous research here may be warranted. It says nothing about causation, for all that its authors seem to feel otherwise - and that they feel otherwise suggests its results should be taken with more than the usual amount of skepticism.

Have a look at table 1. Only 5/31 subjects had “sufficient” vitamin d. In between deficient and sufficient there is the insufficient category, from 20-30 ng/ml.

Though I agree further study is warranted. The highest vitamin D group actually had the highest mortality after 84 days. Though this group also had the most pre-existing heart conditions by far, so that could account for it.

Ah, there was a second such study in the pdf. Mortality down by almost half.

——————

Intervention was carried out intramuscularly with 300,000 IU of vitamin D. Instead of 28 days only 18 days mechanical ventilation, instead of 29 only 19 on ICU, instead of 61% deaths only 36%.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31531088/

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#63

Post by pkaye »

BurningCycles wrote: post #48
sharpneli wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland we put Vitamin D in milk that’s sold on normal shops. And taking a supplement is heavily recommended. Though this is mostly because for 6 months of a year one simply cannot get it the natural way (too cold and sun is too low). And thanks to this we don’t have much deficiency, long time ago we used to have. Not saying it means it would help with covid. But the supplements definitely help with deficiency in…

>In Finland we put Vitamin D in milk that’s sold on normal shops. I'd wager it's the same in all the Nordic countries, at least it's the same here in Sweden. A couple a months ago when I spoke to my dad, he told me he had a checkup because he had been unusually tired, turned out that the only thing the testing showed was that he had d-vitamin deficiency. What surprised me is that he was given prescription d-vitamins,…

You can get larger doses of vitamin D in one pill as a prescription. Like 20000 IU once every week or two instead of daily.

Also there is vitamin D2 and D3. The normal stuff you take is called D2. The D3 is made by the kidneys from converting D2. But those with certain diseases, the kidneys don't do the conversion so they provide vitamin D3 in the form called calcitriol. Its something I need to take due to my kidney failure.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#64

Post by Johnny555 »

sharpneli wrote: post #18
ve55 wrote: post #2

Although this is a notable finding it's important to remember that it doesn't lead to the conclusion that supplementing vitamin D will be very beneficial here. When vitamin D is produced in the body naturally via exposure to sunlight there's a huge amount of other things that occur as well, and we don't have a ton of good science to back up if curing a vitamin D deficiency via supplementation of pure vitamin D is rea…

In Finland we put Vitamin D in milk that’s sold on normal shops. And taking a supplement is heavily recommended. Though this is mostly because for 6 months of a year one simply cannot get it the natural way (too cold and sun is too low). And thanks to this we don’t have much deficiency, long time ago we used to have. Not saying it means it would help with covid. But the supplements definitely help with deficiency in…

In the USA we fortify milk with Vitamin-D too, but only a small amount - each 8oz cup (240ml) has 15% (3mcg) of your recommended daily allowance.

There's research that suggests that the RDA is way too low, plus many adults don't drink a lot of milk, certainly not enough to make significant impact on their vitamin-D intake.

https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/food...

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fortified-milk#3

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#65

Post by baix777 »

tekgnos wrote: post #22

It is not surprising at all that Covid-19 matches what we already know about Vitamin D and Influenza. There are consequences for radically altering the environment in which humans evolved. We were nude outdoors and now we are clothed and indoors. When we do briefly go outside, we are all conditioned to slather on sunscreen, which blocks all Vitamin D generation. Why do people tend to get sick in the wintertime and no…

Humans have being wearing clothes for about 170,000 years, indoors and outdoors, long enough for a evolutionary response. Along with fire, clothing is one of our great inventions and allows humans to live in colder climates than we could otherwise. We have, along with other creatures like lice, been evolving since we started wearing clothes.

But why do people get more sick in the winter, when they are forced into close proximity with other people, making illness easier to spread, rather than the summer, when people are outdoors more, and can do things like walk to work in the warm summer sun rather than take the bus in the cold winter rain and snow? Stated differently, we naturally do more social distancing in the summer.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#68

Post by graeme »

LegitShady wrote: post #40
graeme wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about this section of the pdf? From a 2016 study on patients with other respiratory diseases. —————- High dose vitamin D administration in ventilated intensive care unit patients: A pilot double blind randomized controlled trial In the study, patients with vitamin D deficiency ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462371... —————— Ah, the pdf has a second such study. Mortality almost half less…

Those dosages are far higher than anyone supplementing vitamin d are likely to take.

They’re single use doses. These are often used by doctors to treat severe deficiency, e.g. weekly 50,000 UI.

It is plausible that in an ICU situation with limited time a single, even larger dose makes sense. For an individual not critically ill, more gradual daily boosting of vitamin D is possible. The ICU patients didn’t have this time.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#69

Post by Johnny555 »

r00fus wrote: post #31
BurningFrog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically true, but you should still eat vitamin D supplements. It's very cheap and safe, so worst case it has less effect than you hope. You can overdose, but you have to really crazy with the dosage. Also 1: Vitamin D supplements do cure rickets. Also 2: All of us who eat supplements should show up in the stats as high in vitamin D, so the data does partially cover that case.

What brand/strength of VitaminD supplements do you all take?

I take NatureMade brand vitamin-D supplements.

That brand is USP certified which means their product is externally certified (through products purchased at stores) to contain the amount of supplement they say it has.

There are some other similar certification programs that you can look for when choosing supplements, but USP seems to be the most rigorous:

https://www.consumerreports.org/supplements/how-to-choose-su...

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#70

Post by nradov »

ve55 wrote: post #2

Although this is a notable finding it's important to remember that it doesn't lead to the conclusion that supplementing vitamin D will be very beneficial here. When vitamin D is produced in the body naturally via exposure to sunlight there's a huge amount of other things that occur as well, and we don't have a ton of good science to back up if curing a vitamin D deficiency via supplementation of pure vitamin D is rea…

One effect of sunlight exposure is to stimulate production of nitric oxide, which lowers blood pressure. Hypertension is one of the most common comorbid conditions for COVID-19 deaths. I don't know if there's a causal relationship but it could be worth further research.
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