111–120 of 304 posts
Getting sunlight in the morning, in particular, seems important. Even in winter months, I'll go outside for 30 minutes or so in nothing but shorts and do farmer walks, etc. and feel great throughout the day.
It's unfortunate that it is not simple to get regular tests for vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The whole process seems to be stuck behind the doctor appointment firewall. This might be one of the reasons why Theranos was so readily believed. As the quantified self movement that gained popularity around the same time showed, there's an appetite in certain segments of the population for this type of testing and trac…
I've often wondered if it would be economically feasible for blood donation banks to do this as a perk/incentive for giving blood. Every 6 months or so, you donate blood and as part of the process you get run-of-the-mill bloodwork report emailed to you a few days later. You'd have to make sure you weren't creating an incentive for sick people to donate blood just for the lab work, but otherwise it seems like it would…
While I don't think Vitamin D is a covid cure - I think it's appalling that Youtube has banned anything that discusses vitamin D and covid. Especially when there is so much science behind it, and so much more that we need to do to understand it and covid better. I know there is rampant misinformation out there, but I fail to see how this censorship serves the public interest - and wonder what benefits google has to g…
I'm waiting for one of the big tech companies to end up getting sued for their self appointed role as arbiters of truth on all of human knowledge. Everyone hates politicians, even if not everyone hates the same politicians, so there's some appetite for tech companies favoring speech from one group or another. But now that they're wading into the territory of health, they're putting themselves into a precarious positi…
Before the vitamin D link was so widely reported, I remember seeing a bunch of comments online (including HN) from people saying things along the lines of "We've been self-isolating at home since January, only bought things online, and STILL got sick!" I'm not a professional and this is just me spouting ideas, but I wonder if this is one reason why America is so hard hit compared to Asia. Americans generally commute…
you can sanity-check your suspicion by looking at the data across countries. peru, spain, mexico and brazil should be enough to show that your idea is probably not correct
Authors controlled for age, sex. But I'd like to see additional control for race. Black people have less Vitamin D due to melanin blocking sunlight. And black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. So I'm now curious whether it's really Vitamin D deficiency that's causing the poor outcomes, or some racial socioeconomic factor that Vitamin D is simply a marker for.
Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well?
While I don't think Vitamin D is a covid cure - I think it's appalling that Youtube has banned anything that discusses vitamin D and covid. Especially when there is so much science behind it, and so much more that we need to do to understand it and covid better. I know there is rampant misinformation out there, but I fail to see how this censorship serves the public interest - and wonder what benefits google has to g…
It's not always just public benefit. You have two choices: 1. Leave a video up published by a non-scientific person which has possibly harmful claims. 2. Take the video down, get decried for censorship, avoid spreading what we know is a problem right now: misinformation. I leave option 3, policing content out of the picture. People mistake what is happening now as policing but really it's avoiding policing what they…
At least when the government tries to police something we can grab onto it, debate it as a matter of policy, and there's a process to change that policy. With private companies trying to do the work of the government (if that really is the case, and whatever their reasons - fear of formal regulation, etc), it's far harder to manage. I'd rather have a clear conversation about the government's ability to censor speech than have a few oligarchs working as shadow censors on behalf of the government.
I must admit I was completely ignorant of the effects of Vitamin D deficiency on common illnesses such as the flu as well as how unbelievably common that deficiency is for people living in much of the northern hemisphere. Will it cure COVID19? No. But do I think there's a decent chance it will improve my outcome while simultaneously improving my ability to fight off other viruses. I am honestly completely shocked tha…
> I am honestly completely shocked that we haven't seen governments and the media increasing people's awareness of this issue. The fact that it hasn't been picked up by journalists and public health officials should rather be reason for you to be skeptical of early research cherry-picked by random programmers on the internet... the same people that were blowing up HN with hydroxychloroquine stories just a few months…
Most of the people I've seen mentioning it recently have been medical and scientists on other sites.
Authors controlled for age, sex. But I'd like to see additional control for race. Black people have less Vitamin D due to melanin blocking sunlight. And black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. So I'm now curious whether it's really Vitamin D deficiency that's causing the poor outcomes, or some racial socioeconomic factor that Vitamin D is simply a marker for.
> And black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well?
Yeah, so this is a notable bit of nuance. Black people in Africa likely tend to get a bit more sun exposure compared to Black people in northern territories e.g. Europe, US, etc., so it wouldn't surprise me if Vitamin D deficiencies among Black people in the US and Europe are much more prevalent.
https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/09/24/african-americans...
Wouldn't surprise me if the same is true in southern India or other territories where melanin (genetic or otherwise) tracks with sun exposure.
MDPI follows an author-pays model, which incentivizes it to accept all submissions instead of publishing only good-quality work. In fact, this publisher is highly suspect, as it has allegedly pressured peer reviewers to accept low-quality work for publication in the recent past: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/open-access-editors-r... https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/be... I would trea…